


A Hummingbird Feather

by Lucifra



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: F/F, Gratuitous puns, Kidnapped Taylor Hebert, Kidnapping, Nonbinary Character, Power Theft, SI is Nonbinary, Self-Indulgent, Self-Insert, Swearing, Trump power, ask to tag, tags to be updated
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:27:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 33,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27891505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lucifra/pseuds/Lucifra
Summary: One character, present at Ellisburg, changes everything. SI. Work title from the material component of Foresight in D&D 5e.
Relationships: Ravager/Mouse Protector
Comments: 13
Kudos: 46





	1. Threatening Creatures and Trigger Events

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where the stage is set, featuring Tom Calvert not going evil.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Worm is absolutely a murderworld.
> 
> Well, it would be, if Amber wasn’t taking steps.
> 
> Nota bene: in this version, Nilbog triggered in 2000, instead of 2001, and the… shall we say the big encounter with the Slaughterhouse 9 happens in ‘01 instead of ‘00.
> 
> This one isn’t going to be anywhere near as long as One Insurgent Butterfree, and might end up just being 10 chapters, but no promises.

Amber chopped her hand sideways, green-white force fields cleaving neatly (and somewhat oxymoronically) through the neck of one of Nilbog’s creatures. Her off-hand snapped forward, then slightly back in a clawing gesture, and the heat flowed out of the thing, leaving it to shatter as it landed.

“Alright, SpecOp Lady, we should be _más o menos_ clear until the edge of town.” Amber took a deep breath in to calm their pounding heart.

“Thank you, Stitch in Time.” The PRT operative nodded at the hero. “We’ll set up so we can hold as best we can.”

Amber nodded. “I’ll stick around for five minutes after we get there before I go back in.”

Then, once they arrived outside what was nominally the city limits, she clicked on her com. “To all remaining PRT units in Ellisburg, this is Stitch in Time. As the sole remaining Protectorate member I am hereby claiming command of this mission. Captain Piggot is in the process of setting up a defensive position to the south of the city. If it’s practical for you, meet up with another squad and make your way there. If not, hunker down as best you can. I’m helping set up with Piggot for five minutes, then running retrieval. I’m getting as many of you as I can out.” Amber pulled a small box out of a belt pouch, made sure the light on top was glowing green, then returned it to her belt.

That done, Amber dropped to one knee and pressed their palm against the ground. “Lady! Tell me what kind of defensive emplacement you want!”

She frowned for a moment, looking at the remaining members of her squad. “Towers if you can, otherwise trenches.”

Amber frowned, running quick calculations (or, more accurately, listening to her Thinker power about what her force field module could handle) before shaking her head. “Towers are no good, but I can give you trenches and spikes.”

It was a quick and dirty job, using force fields to ape shovels, but when it was done, the PRT soldiers had a number of trenches to use to hold the line, and she launched herself skyward on a force field disk.

“Sound off. Who’s where, who’s pinned down and who’s mobile?”

“Sgt. Tom Calvert, my squad is pinned down against the town hall. One of Nilbog’s creatures caught the Captain.”

“Alright, Calvert, pop me a flare and I’ll be right over.” The point of red light that rose into the sky served as the endpoint for their course, and as they hovered above the massive swarm of Nilboglings (as they privately decided to call them) they considered her options.

Gravity crushing was out, at least while running the force field module, the two of them just drank too much power (more gravity than the force fields. Amber still hadn’t managed to figure out why the fields were so cheap, energy-wise, and gravity was not). A force field crush was… inefficient, in terms of power output per minion destroyed. That left the thermal energy module, which would work out nicely, since she could use the absorbed energy from earlier to fuel it and take some of the load off her power unit.

An instant of looking into the future reinforced her decision, and they nodded to themself. “Calvert and squad, be warned. I’m about to drop a barrier in front of you to protect from thermal backwash, so cease fire in five, four, three, two, one.”

Waiting long enough for the last shots to echo off the streets, she wrapped the beleaguered PRT troops in a cylinder of green-white power, then descended to more or less street level, give or take six feet.

With a whisper-spat “Burn!” they triggered the thermal unit to heat output, making sure to limit the attack to less than a quarter of the heat reservoir on some hint of intuition from her Thinker power, and the Nilboglings did.

Once the sizzling of pseudosynthetic flesh died down, Amber let the barrier fall, then nodded to the exhausted soldiers. “Calvert?”

A lanky man raised his hand tiredly.

“Excellent.” She reactivated her radio. “SpecOp Lady’s dug in down south, take five for me to clear the way and spring whatever traps Nilbog’s set up and then meet up with her.” Amber nodded, tapping at her belt pouch, then turned towards the road and then surged forward, a crude bulldozer blade of green-white force scraping against the asphalt just in front of her.

“Stitch in Time, this is Captain Jim Stranger. We’re pinned down at the intersection of Main Street and I193.” The voice crackled over Amber’s radio.

“Got it, _dáme un momento_ to finish clearing the way for Calvert’s group and I’ll be right over.” Amber redoubled the pace, slamming through straggling bio-constructs until they managed to reach Lady’s encampment, then crushed them into a roughly spherical shape.

“Calvert’s on his way,” she said, before taking off to help Captain Stranger, guided by the sound of gunfire.

Another couple of minutes of force field-based flight left her force field module feeling uncomfortably warm, so she landed just out of sight from the ravening horde and switched over to the as of yet unused gravity module, wincing as the whine from her power unit shifted up in pitch.

“Captain Stranger,” they said, “prep for a sudden gravitic surge in five, four, three, two, one.”

She stepped around the corner of the building she was using to conceal herself, then clenched her fist, gauntlet-based controls surging gravity downwards.

The gunfire surged in volume as the better-trained soldiers opened up, taking down the temporarily pinned Nilboglings, then died down to nothing.

“Alright, y’all, let’s get going while the going’s good,” drawled Amber, letting up on the gravity.

“Thanks, Stitch,” panted Captain Stranger. “We got time to prep a parting gift for Nilbog?”

Amber raised an eyebrow. “What kind?”

“We, uh…” Captain Stranger hesitated. “We might have picked up a few mines in the armory before deploying today.”

The expression on Amber’s face was too vicious to be called a smile. “Set it up, I’ll keep the _pinché_ things out.”

This, of course, invited a massive wave of Nilboglings from the north once they were mostly done. Amber, as a matter of course, advanced, switching to the thermal module and draining heat from the street. “Once the mines are set, fall back,” they said.

“Two minutes until the mines are set, we’ve already got the tripwire ready,” came the Captain’s reply.

“Understood.” Amber cracked her knuckles. “Ooh, and I burn,” she sang, teeth bared in what only a great fool would call a smile. “Fuel is pumping engines, burning hot, loose, and clean.”

The street caught fire.

Amber had dumped the rest of her heat reservoir into the attack, and it showed as the tar in the road bubbled, then ignited. Nilbog’s minions were a tad more flammable, and most of the ones in the horde caught.

The whine of the power unit spiked at the same time as Amber’s head decided that it had had enough, thank you very much, and wrapped their brain in pain and pressure.

Amber groaned, then spat out a “Fuck” before forcing herself through the pain. “Right,” she said, voice strained. “Let’s double-time it, gang. I don’t have the gear to hold Nilbog off for much longer-” the whining in her power pack has made that abundantly clear “-but this should buy us enough time while he tries to put together another swarm.”

As if to drive her point home, her radio crackled to life and Lady’s voice came through. “Captain Stranger, Stitch in Time, all other squads either returned or confirmed KIA.”

The captain blinks, then shakes himself. “Right.” He turned to the rest of his squad. “Double time, soldiers! Nilbog’s creatures ain’t gonna to set mines for themselves!”

As soon as they finished setting up the explosives, the soldiers began to fall back to Lady’s position, with one on each side dropping any of the Nilboglings that decided to pop out of side alleys or buildings.

Eventually, they wised up, and just as the redoubt that Lady was holding came into view, Nilboglings came boiling out onto the street, and in the time that it took Amber to switch back to force fields and wrap the squad in a protective barrier, most of them were sporting more scratches, and one or two was nursing a broken bone.

“Hang onto your butts,” Amber said, clenching their fist as they focused on directing the external layer of the force field to grow spikes and then spin while propelling them forwards.

Amber clicked her com. “Lady, get everyone ready to go. I’ll buy you what time I can before I bug out.”

“But-”

“But nothing,” Amber snapped, already flicking on their thermal module. “I said I’d get y’all out of here, and I will.” She frowned, then nodded. “I’ve got my own way home.”

“...Understood. Godspeed, Stitch in time.” Lady signaled with her hand, then the PRT troops began drawing together into a more-or-less cohesive group, and once Amber’s force field construct landed and offloaded Captain Stranger and squad, they started pulling back to a number of transports.

Amber turned back to the rapidly-spreading swarm of Nilboglings, then her lip peeled up in a snarl. “Alright, fuckers, the line stops here.”

“You will fail, hero, and we will rend the flesh from your bones,” they said in one shivering voice.

“Eh… nah.” Amber reached out and clawed back with their right hand, tearing the heat out of the nearby area and Nilboglings. Then, she slashed her other hand out, a circular wave of green-white force lashed out to shatter the nearby, now-frozen Nilboglings.

“We will make you hurt before you die, hero,” came the swarm’s voice, flowing forward like a sea of ravening death.

“Maybe so. But maybe not.” The wave of heat was weaker than either of the attacks she’d used earlier in the day, but seeing as how it was channeled by two flat layers of force field until it reached the Nilboglings, it seared through a fair few.

“Stitch in Time, this is Lady. We’re taking off now.”

“Got- agh! Fucker!” One of the Nilboglings had thrown… something that latched onto her arm and started pulsating while she was distracted, sending pain swelling through her arm.

“You will feel it as the parasite devours your flesh and becomes one of my children just as your life ends,” reverberated from the swarm.

Amber awkwardly shoved her hand into a belt pouch across her body. “Two things,” she ground out through gritted teeth. “First off, if it kills its host, it’s a parasitoid, like the English.”

“Semantics. And the second?”

Amber grinned, then extricated the box from her belt pouch, thumb on the button. “Bye, Felicia.”

In a flash of white-hot ceramic shards that vaporized off almost instantly, Amber reappeared in a messy workshop, then stumbled.

“Whoa, what happened?” Hero moved forward, hand out.

“Nilbog.” Amber reached out with her left arm. “Get me to the stasis pod, please.”

“What is that on your arm?” he asked, dragging her towards the spherical pod in the corner of the room.

“Nilbog called it his parasite. It’s a parasitoid that’s trying to eat me and make one of his things.”

Hero froze. “Are you sure you should-”

“The stasis pod will be able to handle it, but just in case…” Amber hit the quickrelease on her harness, then handed it to the gold-armored hero. “This should be able to help if it can’t, either with the thermal module or the force fields. You should be able to hook it into your gauntlets.”

“Understood.” Hero continued hauling her to the pod, which was full of golden liquid. Amber slapped at the side of her mask, turning off the camera she had had recording.

Amber stepped gingerly into it, but before her face finished sinking beneath the surface, she made eye contact with Hero even through his visor. “Beware the Siberian, she would be the one that kills you.”

Then, she sank into the pod, which solidified around her, and time gave way to pain as the machinery pit her will against that of Nilbog’s parasite.

* * *

Eventually, something changed. Amber came to awareness in an empty void, in her red-accented purple costume but lacking her tech harness. She sighed. “Well, this isn’t ominous.”

“Well, I suppose it might be.”

Amber whirled to see that the empty void wasn’t so empty after all. There were two men standing behind her, one taller, red-coated, and one armed; the other was short, pale, sporting a tousled shock of black hair, and glowing red.

Amber raised her eyebrows, she had a suspicion of who they were, but she didn’t want to say anything in case she was wrong. “And who are you?”

The glowing one responded first. “The source of your power. Or at least one of them, Campbell was… not compatible with this method of communication.”

Amber looked at them, distinctly unimpressed. “You’re not Zion, Eden, or Abbadon.”

“No, we interfered in their plan for this world.” The one-armed man stepped forward. “If you don’t mind, I have a story in mind that might clear things up.”

Amber shrugged. “Nothing better to do, at this point. Go ahead.”

He inclined his head. “Thank you.”

He took in a deep breath. “Not so long ago, in a galaxy that just happens to be right here (well, give or take a few billion different dimensions), there came to be a man who came to be called Calamity.”

The glowing man raised his eyebrows and looked at the red-coated man who was telling the tale, as if to tell him to hurry up.

“He was constantly experiencing sensory overload, so he hated the world, which would ordinarily not be too bad. However, he was the First of the Epics in this world, and in giving powers to the other Epics of the world, he twisted their minds. He didn’t mean to, but his subconscious wasn’t exactly cooperative.”

“Globe, if you do not hurry, you will-” The pale man’s jaw kept moving, but no sound came out.

“Be perfectly fine,” came the other speaker’s voice. “I was asked to tell the story, and I will tell it.”

The other man’s glow subsided, and he nodded reluctantly.

“Thank you. So, Amber, you might have heard part of this story before, but David Charleston, the Steelslayer, with the help of Limelight and Firefight, convinced him that not all other Epics were evil by nature, and he decided to roam the worlds and test people. And now, he’s testing you, with a version of his power.”

The woman in question gave the Hero a level look, then the Epic. “And I’m on Earth Bet because…”

Globe shrugged. “Test of character. You more or less fought off Nilbog’s ‘Parasite’ without internal powers.”

“And I’ve more or less succeeded?”

Globe nodded. “Enough to make the jump from making Motivators to having actual powers, besides just a combination of Fortuity’s and Nick Campbell’s.”

“Alright then. Anything else I should be aware of before I get back and tell everyone I second triggered and changed from a Tinker to a Trump?”

Calamity grinned. It was not a human expression. “It took almost ten years for your perseverance to be tested. It is now January 3rd, 2011”

“Oh, fu-”

Then, she woke up in the stasis pod she remembered building two weeks or ten years ago.

Elsewhenwhere, Globe raised his eyebrow. “Was that really necessary, Calamity?”

“No, but it was entertaining enough for the readers, if I am any judge.” Globe just sighed.

* * *

Amber’s eyes opened just as the pod reliquified around her, and she struggled to move through the still-thick liquid until she managed to get her hand onto the edge of the pod. She pulled herself out of the pod, then overbalanced, almost collapsing to the floor before shoving out and landing on a platform of Limelight’s green-white force field.

“Amber?” The hero in question looked over towards the source of the voice, then blinked.

“Hero? What…” She stopped to cough, voice rusty after protracted disuse. “What happened to your leg?”

The gold-armored hero sighed. “The Siberian got me.” He readjusted the stump his thigh ended in. “Your force field kept me alive, but I didn’t have it up when she tore my leg off.”

Amber pulled herself the rest of the way out of the pod, then settled on the ground, wobbly for only a moment before her brain reconnected fully as if coming out of a particularly deep sleep.

Hero frowned. “Wait, did you have two force field modules?”

Amber shook her head. “Second trigger flipped me from an imbuement Trump, not a Tinker to a… I think maybe type 7?” She was relying on her precog power to not horribly mess up, which she dimly recalled should have just given her hunches, not the words to say. “Not quite sure. As it turns out, ten years of fighting off a parasite thing is fairly traumatic.”

Hero blinked. “I’ve never heard of that happening.”

Amber shrugged, then let her power continue to feed her words. “No clue, but it does answer my question about those black boxes, they were receptacles for my power.”

Another thought forced itself through the thinning fog in her head. “Wait, what day is it?”

Hero frowned at the apparent non sequitr. “January 3rd, 2011.”

“Fuck. What time is it in Brockton Bay?”

Hero frowned, then pulled out his phone, and after a moment said “8:48 AM. Why?”

Amber leaned even further into her precog power, then sighed, clicking the camera in her mask to record. “A Ward is in the process of bullying someone into double triggering. Hang on, I have to go deal with this bullshit.”

Amber focused on the necessity of being elsewhere, then felt something expand a shade in her chest, and in a flash of white-hot ceramic that she absently noted as Obliteration’s power, she was in Winslow High School, right behind who her power told her was Sophia Hess and watching her hold a locker closed, snarling through the grate, wisps of curly brown hair trapped by the door. She was flanked by two people that she thought were probably Emma Barnes and Madison Clements who were also holding the locker shut, likely starting when she was locking the extra lock and not stopping.

“What the fuck are you doing.”

The three whirled on the hero, then froze. Sophia was the one who reacted first. “Stitch in Time? I thought you were dead.”

“I’m alive enough to arrest you for assault. Open that fucking locker.”

“But-” she began.

“Open. That. _Pinché_. Locker. Now.”

Cowed into obedience, she did, but did nothing to catch the girl who was twitching even as she fell backwards out of the locker.

Amber caught her with a force field, taking note of the rotting menstrual products that cascaded out with her. “Make that attempted murder.”

Amber made sure to make a call to Daniel Hebert first, to make sure he had Taylor’s collected evidence

Twenty minutes later, Amber had made sure to get photos from her mask camera of the way that Taylor had been injured and covered in both bugs and old menstrual products before healing her with Limelight’s gifted regeneration, then sent her away to go shower and clean up. In that time, three men that Amber’s power told her were Alan Barnes, Anthony Clements, and Danny Hebert (who was indeed holding a significant stack of papers), as well as a PRT agent for Sophia, had arrived, all of whom had been escorted to the Principal’s office.

When Amber strode into the room, escorting Taylor, Alan Barnes was standing, red-faced and screaming.

“Sit down, Mr Barnes.” He sat, shocked. “Thank you. Now, I saw the three of these girls holding the door to Taylor’s locker closed with her inside and covered in both bugs and used sanitary products. That is absolutely grounds for both assault and attempted murder charges, and I think that with those papers Danny’s brought-” Amber gestured to the stack at this. “there’s a pattern of harassment.”

“Now see here-” Alan Barnes was clearly building up to a spectacular head of steam.

“I have a video recording, Mr. Barnes, and before you get on me about it not being permissible in court because of a lack of consent, allow me to remind you that that does not apply to Protectorate members in the lawful execution of their duties.” He shut his mouth, fuming.

Amber exhaled through her nose. “Alright. Any other questions?”

After a moment of silence, Amber nodded. “Alright then. The police should be on their way, and I have to go explain to the Director why I showed up out of nowhere in her city and performed an arrest.” She turned to Danny Hebert. “I’ll be in touch, sir.” She turned and stalked out of the room, already calling the PRT hotline for Brockton Bay thanks to her precog power. She wasn’t looking forward to this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that’s Chapter 1! I’m interested to see what people think about this story, and also this character and her powers.
> 
> I’m probably going to be going an every other week update schedule for this one with Delta on the off weeks.
> 
> I plan to upload that fic to SV and SB every week until we’re caught up with AO3 and FFN.
> 
> Please read and review, and have a nice day!


	2. New Friends, and Some Old Ones, Too.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, meetings could have just been e-mails, but not these ones.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Something I wanted to clear up from last chapter: The reason that Nilbog’s creation vanished over the 10 years, despite the fact that both Amber and the parasite were in complete stasis, is because of Limelight’s frankly ridiculous regeneration, which only really took place just before she woke up. More on the capes on tumblr to minimize A/N word counts.

Amber was very much thankful for tinkertech. If not for the (Hero-made) phone that was called decades ahead of its time when it was first made, she would have had to rely on her limited precognition to try and find her way there, which was a tricky proposition at the best of times. At worst, she would have run into… Lung was the Big Fish in Brockton Bay, Amber thought. It would have been just like the author to lead her into a fight with Lung for narrative convenience.

The map service she pulled up led her in a fairly long jog to the PRT headquarters, but thanks to the healing provided by the power she’d picked up from Limelight (or, it made sense that it was from Limelight), she managed to make the run without too much strain.

Since they had time to think about what Calamity and Globe had… implied about what their actual power was, Amber decided to test a few things. A few minutes’ experimentation told them that they had powers corresponding to all the tech they’d made when they thought they were a Tinker, including the stasis pod (which, dollars to donuts, was based on Thane’s powers) and the healing module they hadn’t managed to make efficient enough to take on missions yet.

On the whole, they had at least some powers from Marvel’s Thane and the ex-Powered Legacy, but the vast majority of their powers were based on Epics, those being Fortuity, Limelight, Conflux, and Obliteration.

“Plenty of mid-tier combat powers, plus a few utility sets,” she mused aloud, “but nothing really impressive that doesn’t require buildup, and missing the ones I haven’t put together motivators for, including Limelight’s disintegration and Legacy’s flight.” She frowned for a moment, then nodded. “First priority, once I have time to experiment, is Steelheart… no, the big passive might be an issue. Sourcefield, then.” She nodded. “That’s a decent Blaster/Mover/Shaker combo, all active, if I’m remembering her power profile right.”

“Who are you talking to?”

“Empty night!” Amber was halfway through an attack before the red costume clicked and she arrested the motion. “Wait, you’re Assault, right? Brockton Bay Protectorate?”

“Yeah, that’s me. But I don’t know who you are, besides in bad taste. Let the dead rest, you know? Piggot and her group are still touchy about Ellisburg.”

“Ahh.” Amber winced. “This might be tricky. One sec.” They stopped, then fished out their phone again and called up Hero.

“Amber? What’s going on? Why’d you leave like that?”

“Hey, sorry about that. It’s just… there was something I knew was happening that I had to take care of. I’ll explain everything later, just… I need a favor first. Can you call up the Brockton Bay… It’s PRT that has their headquarters in the city, right?”

“Uh, yeah. Why?”

“Wait wait wait wait wait.” Assault held up both hands in a “slow down” motion. “You’re… actually Stitch in Time?”

With her off hand, Amber flourished, creating a d8 shape with Limelight’s force fields, while saying “I need you to call them up and let them know it’s actually me when I get there. If they need a Master/Stranger code phrase, go with the Phantom one.”

Hero sighed, then spoke. “Understood, but we need to have a talk when you get back.”

Amber nodded. “I’ve, uh…  _ Necesito hablar contigo, los otros tres, y la contessa _ .” Amber heard Hero’s shocked intake of breath. “I’ll be ready once I deal with some stuff here in Brockton Bay.”

“You’d better be. Good luck, kid.”

“You too, sir.” Amber hung up, then pinched the bridge of her nose. “ _ Puta madre _ , this is shaping up to be one hell of a mess.”

Assault sighed. “Well, let’s get to the PRT HQ so we can clear some of it up.”

Amber nodded, then froze, the gears of their mind churning. “Hang on. Assault, can you pull up a picture of the lobby? I’m… well, let’s just say that I have access to a Mover power that’ll let me jump there if I have a picture to look at.”

Assault blinked. “Damn, tinkertech is bullshit. Hang on, I have to call this in.” Having said this, he stepped away and started talking on his com.

Amber took this time to try and figure out Sourcefield’s power, trying to use the sensation of when she’d electrocuted herself building tech (which, for some reason, her precog had never warned her about) and, for lack of a better term, push it into Limelight’s force fields.

She hadn’t gotten much further than just causing the fields to flicker before Assault stepped back. “Alright, we have preliminary clearance for you to teleport into the PRT HQ lobby, pending Master/Stranger checks.” He held up his phone, showing a picture of a wide-open room on the screen. “That work for you?”

Amber scrutinized the image, then nodded. “Should do just fine, let’s find out.”

Amber closed her eyes, then focused on being in the room she saw in the image. After a few seconds, a flash of heat and light marked the transit, and she was in the PRT lobby.

A woman wearing a tight, circuit-patterned bodysuit was standing there, arms crossed. “Hero said I’m supposed to say ‘I’m a shooting star’ to you.”

Amber nodded. “That wish you wish you never made.”

She sighed. “I kind of hoped it wasn’t you. Too many messes this could make.” She started walking towards the elevator, and Amber quickly fell into step.

Amber huffed out a half-laugh. “Shit, Battery, the mess was already fuckin’ huge. I ran over after arresting what’s probably a Ward for assault and attempted murder, and if I hadn’t interrupted, that could have fucked the entirety of ENE over.”

Battery missed a step. “What? It’s not even 9:30 AM!”

Amber shrugged. “What can I say? I’ve got a talent for stirring up trouble. But in this case, she was doing it in her civilian identity.”

“What the fuck.”

“Yeah, it’s-”

“Hey, Battery, I’m ready to continue the patrol when you are, so-” Amber looked up to see Miss Militia freeze, then raise her gun (some sort of shotgun) to point at them. “I don’t know who you are, but-”

“Everyone give it up for America’s favorite fighting Frenchman!” Amber snapped, reciting her half of an old M/S code. Then, more softly, “It’s me, Militia.”

“And so the balance shifts,” she said on autopilot. The no-longer-younger woman looked gobsmacked, her power flickering through a dozen forms in half as many seconds. “How?”

“Long story, involving a stasis pod, one of Nilbog’s creatures, and a Second Trigger. I’ll probably need to tell the director how I survived before we get to arresting a Ward at Winslow, so maybe tag along into the meeting.”

Militia frowned. “The only Ward at Winslow is Shadow Stalker.”

“I caught Sophia Hess cramming another student into a locker that definitely qualified, at the time at least, as a biohazard.” Amber made direct eye contact with the flag-clad hero.

“How do you even know they’re the same person?” asked Battery.

Amber raised an eyebrow momentarily. “I have a decent Thinker rating. Nothing too extreme, just enough precog to lead me to success. In this case, it told me to come to the PRT, and I figured out one of them had to be a parahuman. The Protectorate would have stepped in before the point of attempted murder if the victim were a Ward, and Barnes and Clements didn’t move like fighters, so that just left Sophia. You just confirmed it,” she said, extemporizing a somewhat reasonable explanation that could be backed up with her Thinker power as opposed to the actual truth.

Battery sighed. “I did, didn’t I.”

“Anyways, I’ve got another pressing meeting… after this, so I’d appreciate it if we could head up quickly.”

“Got it. Right this way.” Battery hit the button next to the elevator, and the doors hummed open almost immediately. Two minutes of somewhat awkward silence later, they exited into a decently-sized reception area with two doors along the wall opposite the elevator. On the right, there was a well-varnished desk, behind which sat a secretary, and on the left was another two doors.

“Hi, Stitch in Time here to talk to the director.” Amber waved awkwardly.

“I’m sorry, Director Piggot is occupied dealing with the arrest of a Ward and has asked not to be disturbed,” said the secretary.

“This is relevant to that, I’d say,” said Amber, “seeing as how I was the arresting officer.”

The secretary froze, then got up and slipped through a door labeled with Piggot’s name. After a moment, they returned. “You may enter the Director’s office now.”

“Thank you.” Amber walked forward, flanked by Battery and Miss Militia, then opened the door.

Piggot looked up, then froze, making direct eye contact with a ghost from her past.

“Hi, Director. You’ve done well for yourself.”

“So let me get this straight.” Amber raised an eyebrow but refrained from making a joke at Piggot’s expense. “You teleported into your workshop, where you already had a healing stasis pod prepared, after Nilbog tried to convert you, then spent ten years in crippling agony, then Second Triggered, woke up, then came to Brockton Bay to save a girl from Shadow Stalker.”

Amber nodded. “ _ Más o menos _ , yeah.”

“And why was it so important that you save the girl?” Amber’d say this for Piggot, she certainly didn’t quit.

Amber frowned, thinking, then decided. “This doesn’t leave this room.” Making eye contact individually with each other person, Amber continued. “When I Second Triggered, for just a moment, my Thinker power got turned up to 11, and it told me what would have happened if I wasn’t here. The girl would have become the scariest nonhuman Master on the planet, with wins against Alexandria, Behemoth, and after extenuating circumstances, the biggest threat to the planet. She would have been pigeonholed into being a villain by Armsmaster, a villain named Coil, and Shadow Stalker, and it took the death of Alexandria to allow her to be the hero she really wanted to be.”

“What the fuck,” said Piggot.

“Yeah, I know. It was really fucking weird. But it’s… well, there’s too much in that vision that I couldn’t have known. Not with the short range of my Thinker power.” Amber shrugged. “You and Calvert would have been the only survivors of Ellisburg, and the Siberian would have killed Hero. He told me today he only survived because he had my force field generator.”

“What do you mean, short range?” asked Miss Militia.

“I only had good hunches, for within… like an hour. Like, in Ellisburg, I didn’t use my entire thermal reserve for the group pinning down Calvert in Ellisburg because I needed it for later, that kind of thing.” Amber shrugged.

“And how do we know what you’re saying is true?” Everyone turned to look at Battery. “What? It’s a legitimate concern. This could just be the result of a Thinker power telling you what we want to hear.”

“Hm. That’s a fair point.” Amber frowned, thinking. “I know something about Battery and Guns n’Roses over here that I have no business knowing, if that’d help. They’re sensitive secrets, so it’d probably be a decent idea to say them in private.”

Piggot frowned, then nodded. “Use my office, one of you out with me.” She exited, and after a moment, so did Battery, pulling the door closed.

“What’s the big secret?” asked Militia.

“You remember the vision from your Trigger event.”

She froze, then nodded. “I’ve never told anyone that. I… okay. You’re on the level.”

Amber nodded. “Thanks for the vote of support.” They got up and opened the door. Without a word, Miss Militia left and Battery entered.

“What do you think you know about me?” she asked, curious.

Amber held up one finger. “Join the Wards ASAP.” She held up a second. “Deliver a vial.” The third finger went up. “Yet to be determined.”

Battery paled. “How do you know that?”

Amber gave her a look that conveyed both amusement and gentle reproach. “Bullshit Second Trigger Thinker vision.”

Battery sighed. “That’s… fair. I guess I believe you now.”

“Thanks, Battery.” Amber got up again and went to the door, then pulled it open. “Alright, we’ve gotta make the rest of this quick, I promised Hero I’d head to a meeting he called to handle the situation.”

Once Piggot and Miss Militia had sat back down, Amber clapped her hands. “Right. There’s a bunch of stuff that I might have already butterflied away, but just in case, is there a supervillain named Coil operating in the Bay?”

Piggot frowned, then shook her head. “Not to my knowledge.”

Amber nodded. “Alright, good. Calvert and Stranger still working with you?”

Piggot nodded. “More or less. They both triggered down the line, but not combat-useful abilities. Calvert is a Thinker who can take two paths and drop the one that he doesn’t want, and Stranger’s got a decent Tinker rating, mostly for body armor.”

“Alright, that’s that out of the way. In no particular order: Kid Win’s specialty is modular components, Dinah Alcott is probably going to trigger as one hell of a precog with decent synergy with a timeline splitter like Calvert, Purity’s going to or might already have cut ties with the Empire and is trying to go straight with Crusader, Night, and Fog, and Leviathan is potentially going to arrive in Brockton Bay in mid-May.”

All three locals blinked, gobsmacked.

“Tell Kid Win first, then try and reach some arrangement with the Alcotts, that should make for one hell of an information-gathering session with Calvert’s power.” Amber frowned. “If we could poach Purity and maybe Rune, with Crusader and the rest of Brockton Bay Protectorate as I know it, we might be able to kill off the Nine.”

This did not help. “By the way, who’s on the Protectorate locally? I know of Armsmaster, Assault, Battery, Velocity, Dauntless, and Triumph.”

Piggot finally snapped out of it. “We have two other members at this time. Heavyweight is a fairly strong Brute that has abnormal lifting capacity and GameMaster is a Master who can turn miniature figurines into full-sized versions of themselves if he has some involvement in making them himself.

Amber blinked a few times, calculating, then nodded. “That should work even better than just who I knew of. Depending on their limits, I might be able to pull it off with just GameMaster, Purity, and Rune.” Seeing their confusion, Amber continued. “Rune to put Hatchet Face on Crawler, Purity to blow them to hell and back, then GameMaster to provide versatile support while we go about picking the rest off.”

“Let’s… put a pin in that, for now. Were there any other revelations you intended to drop on us today?” Piggot asked.

“Not… at the moment, no. I think I’ve covered the important bits.”

“Alright then. You’ve certainly given us… a lot to think about, so…”

Amber nodded. “Certainly. I’ll get out of your hair.”

She closed her eyes, then vanished in a flash of shattering ceramic, reappearing in the lab she shared with Hero. Standing there, conversing, were five people. Four of them she recognized, those being Alexandria, Legend, Eidolon, and Hero, the Tinker standing on a leg of burnished gold. The last was less recognizable, but the fedora on her head clued Amber in to the fact that it was, indeed, Contessa.

“...can’t Path her. Whatever her power is now, it’s strong, and that Thinker power of hers probably has something to do with it,” she said.

Amber rapped on a table, and all five of them snapped to attention, Eidolon already reflexively building up a blast in his off hand before both Hero and Amber snapped “No powers in the Workshop.”

The energy dissipated as he lowered his hand, chastised. “My apologies.”

Amber nodded. “Excellent. Now, I understand you all have questions.”

“That would be… an understatement,” said Alexandria.

“Figured as much. So, in terms of some big stuff, turns out my power isn’t actually on Zion’s network, or on the other one’s. It’s, uh… really complicated, and I think that you should hold your questions for the end. This is going to clear up some things, including how I knew to invite you, Contessa.” Amber was tapping her thumb against the table rapidly, then forced herself to stop. “Any objections?”

“I think we’d be interested in hearing what you have to say, for sure,” said Hero, his baritone voice comforting in its familiarity.

Amber nodded. “In that case, I have to tell you about a story called Worm…”

* * *

A shadow blurred through a wall, then coalesced into a dark-cloaked form, panting heavily after beating up the police that had been called to take her into custody.

Sophia Hess flexed her hands into fists, then relaxed, glowering quite impressively under her mask. They’d almost managed to restrain her before she got away, but more importantly… “That bitch thinks she can protect the little wimp, does she? I don’t think so.”

She flowed upwards, shifting into her Breaker state long enough to reach the roof, then pulled open a ventilation shaft, revealing a crossbow and set of broadheads. Testing them each on her gloved thumb, her face took on an expression that bore far too much malice to be called a smile. “I’m coming for you both, and it won’t be pretty.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “10 chapters” so uh, that was a fucking lie. Amber’s gonna be stuck in meetings for at least part of the next chapter, then after that there’s going to be some networking to take out some of the bigger threats, and she’s probably going to have to take on some local issues before getting to, say, the Teeth.
> 
> In terms of powers of non-Worm Supers/Epics/Etc. mentioned in this section, that’s gonna be over on my writeblr which is @lucifra-writes. I’ll probably paste it later today once I’ve gotten some sleep since I’m posting this at early o’clock in the morning.
> 
> Other than that, read, review, and enjoy!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, people overlook the simple solutions because they need to be clever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, uh… Maybe the “every other week” thing isn’t so accurate for this story.

“That’s… rather difficult to believe,” said Alexandria.

Eidolon clenched his fists, snapping the pen he was using to take notes almost without noticing. “It’s a tall tale is what it is. Rebecca, Calvert, and Tagg, all killed by a low-level master? The same master that joins the Wards and then kills Zion?” He stood, pushing his chair back. “I’m leaving. Rebecca-”

Amber made eye contact through his mask and, for just a moment, let the persistent force field Limelight’s power gave her flicker into visibility. “Sit down, David.”

“And why should I?” he asked, wary.

“My power isn’t shard-based. It comes from a being called Calamity who could probably kill Zion in five minutes flat, if he wanted.”

He sat.

Amber looked at all five other people in the room, then a thought occurred to her. “That’s what’s wrong. Obvious in context, but more difficult outside.”

Legend frowned. “What is?”

“You’ve lost hope. Not just Cauldron, although relying on the Path doesn’t help, but the world as a whole. I mean…” Amber frowned, calculating, then shook her head. “Look, how long is it until the Endbringers cause a complete societal collapse, absent Gold Morning?”

“Three decades until we’re no longer capable of mounting an effective response against them and as a result society descends into anarchy and feudalism, according to WEDGDG,” recited Alexandria without hesitation.

Amber snapped her fingers. “And there’s the issue. The general populace doesn’t even see Zion as a threat, they’ve already hit despair from the Endbringers being on track to destroy humanity within their lifetimes. That’s not counting the shit that’ll go down if everyone realizes ‘oh, fuck, Scion was secretly evil this whole time and the Protectorate was just as evil.” Alexandria raised her hand to interject, but Amber steamrolled over her. “I mean, come on. If people realize you’re behind the Siberian and Shatterbird, even indirectly, you’ll never escape that stigma, let alone if people realize you’re behind the 53s. So that’s not gonna happen.”

Contessa blinked. “What?”

Amber shrugged. “Like I said. If they realize it. I ain’t gonna spill the beans, and I don’t think your on-site medical staff, accountant, or groundskeeper are either.”

“Well then… If you didn’t plan to use it as blackmail, why bring it up?” asked Hero.

“That’s what happens if you bungle it of your own volition, or if I hadn’t interfered: Cauldron revealed in the middle of an A-Class threat release in what was quite possibly the worst way, as well as Alexandria, Calvert the Cauldron Asset to take over the Bay, and Tagg dead for playing hardball with a cape rated Master 5/Thinker 1 who  _ can’t fucking affect humans _ .” Admittedly, Amber was using Taylor’s earlier (and somewhat undersold) ratings, but it served to drive the point home. “There’s a reason we called Taylor Hebert the  _ pinché  _ Queen of Escalation: she had one page in her playbook and that page only had one fucking word. It’s just good luck that Panacea and Bonesaw let her push far enough to match Zion, even if it did destroy her in the process.”

“It was a cautionary measure,” said Legend, nodding as he caught on.

“Bingo.” Amber grinned. “Y’all need a new strategy. I already butterflied that scenario away, but that’s not to say that we’re in the clear.”

Contessa blinked, then turned an intense gaze onto Amber. “How do we deal with the Endbringers?”

Amber frowned. “There’s… a couple of potential solutions. Most of these revolve around David, since his shard is the one that created and ultimately controls them.”

Contessa was the only Cauldron member who didn’t burst out into questions.

Eventually, Amber clapped her hands together, silencing all of them. “Enough. It’s a subconscious thing, not a conscious one, driven by a desire to test the powers that the High Priest shard grants. Get therapy and we’ll probably eliminate the attacks altogether, and…” Amber frowned, thinking. “Depending on how well things work out, we could get them to self-modify and become heroes, or something close.”

“High Priest?” asked Hero.

“Oh, right. That’s what Glaistig Uaine… would have called his shard? Has called? Time travel into the past of another world you have knowledge of is weirdly difficult to map to verb tenses, but that’s the gist of it.” Amber shrugged. “If you have a better name for it, I’m all ears.”

After a moment, Amber spoke up again. “If it helps… I might have a solution to your ‘my powers are getting weaker’ problem.”

It was almost funny how fast Eidolon’s head snapped up. “How?”

“Well, there’s one that might work and one that’s… more morally dubious, but… Well, I should explain first. See, the issue comes from the energy well your shard is drawing from is starting to run dry. Cauldron capes all have this issue since they don’t have an Entity alive to feed them energy all the time like natural triggers. I have a power that allows me to supercharge energy storage devices. I can’t promise it applies to Agents, but it might.”

“How did you get this power, or this knowledge?” asked Alexandria warily.

Amber gave her an unimpressed look. “Bullshit metaknowledge for the knowledge, and the pivot from Tinker to Trump let me use powers based on the ‘tech’ I made, which included a power source. The power that gave me comes from an Epic named Conflux, who could directly power electrical devices or supercharge energy stores.”

Eidolon looked at the rest of the Cauldron members in the room, then nodded. “Do it.”

“Point of order, I haven’t had the chance to practice with that power.” Amber held up a hand in a “whoa there” motion. “I want to test it out on, like, batteries before I work on Eidolon.”

Contessa got up smoothly, then plucked a power cell from Hero’s workbench. “It’s depleted.”

Amber picked it up from the world’s preeminent Thinker’s hand, then frowned, reaching for something in the back of her mind that perked up and took notice of the thing in her hand. “Hydrogen fuel cell? No, no, not that. Efficient, though. Hmm… Is this just a capacitor wired to a collapsed microsingularity that ran off the Hawking radiation?”

Hero nodded. “It, uh… shouldn’t be collapsed, since that’s the energy source, but yeah.”

Amber raised her eyes to meet his through his visor, golden composite reflecting her own brown pair oddly distorted. “Damn. That seems super risky, but…” Amber shrugged. “How long an effective life did it have at max output?”

“About 18 hours of running my current set of armor.”

“Let’s see about that, shall we.” Amber closed her eyes and focused, reaching out for the power lurking in the back of her mind and tugging gently. That didn’t change anything, so she reached farther, until it felt like her head was ready to burst. Then, something clicked into place, and a pulse of something hard to describe beyond “warm” surged through her arm and into the power cell, kickstarting it with an almost soothing hum that quickly dopplered down through infrasound into nothingness.

Amber blinked her eyes open, then held out the power cell. “Alright, I think that worked.”

Hero took the proffered device and slotted it into a recess on the back of his armor. A moment of small gestures and subvocalizations later, and his jaw went slack for a moment. “That’s… wow. Roughly quadruple its base max storage is definitely impressive for a proof of concept.”

“Door to Doctor Mother.” At Alexandria’s command, a square-ish hole in space appeared, and from within the lab stepped the dark-skinned form of Cauldron’s leader.

“Eidolon, are you sure?” she asked.

“I am. I can’t be useful to Cauldron if I’m not at my full power.”

She sighed. “Contessa?”

“Path to restoring Eidolon’s power, step the only: allow Amber to use Conflux’s power on his Agent.”

Amber laughed. “Alright then, Contessa. If you say so.” She raised her hand. “Come on, Eidolon. I need enough skin to put my palm on, I think.”

He sighed, then reached under his right glove and pulled his sleeve up enough to reveal most of his forearm.

Amber laid her hand on his arm, then closed her eyes. There was something inside him that felt… not quite empty, but on its way there. She focused on it, trying to fill it with whatever had filled Hero’s power source-

Amber stood alone in a devastated wasteland covered in red crystals, standing opposite a statue of a person in silver, but an incomplete one- it had rough legs, arms, and a head, but not nearly enough detail to say more than that.

**[Query.]**

Amber winced at the pulse of meaning that shot through her head, but the ache vanished quickly. “The High Priest shard is running out of energy, I was topping it up, or at least trying.”

**[Query.]**

“I don’t know the exact mechanics, but it has something to do with charging energy storage devices.”

**[Apology. Elaboration. Query.]**

“I… I honestly don’t know if it could work for entities. I mean, I know it can be gifted to others, but I don’t know if you count for it, since… well, another Entity’s version of Path to Victory that you were still integrating all but killed you, if you’re Eden.”

**[...Affirmation. Query.]**

“I mean, I might have something that could heal you, but why would I want to? You go around and feed off of planets, then destroy them across dimensions.”

**[Contemplation. Solution.]**

“So, if I figured out a way to… what, teach you Conflux’s power, you’d stop?”

**[Affir- Fear.]**

“What,” came the voice from behind Amber, “is that thing?”

Amber turned to see Alexandria and Eidolon standing behind her, both staring at the statue.

“This is… a potential solution to the Zion problem.”

**[Elaboration. Corrupted.]**

“Wait, so the Butcher is one of Abbadon’s too?!? Fuck.”

“What do you mean, Abbadon?” Alexandria frowned.

“Well, fuck,” muttered Amber. Then, louder: “Alright, so the situation with Zion is actually a lot more complicated than you think. See, how everything got kicked off is…”

* * *

“So, you’re saying that she’s willing to help us deal with Scion, and that there’s another threat on their level out there that tried to get them both killed.” Alexandria was not convinced.

“Why do you think Eden had fallen to the planet so that a child and an unprepared, dimensionally-displaced woman could kill her?” Amber shot back.

**[Agreement. Anger. Sadness.]**

“Yeah, I can understand that, it’s just that… look, the Warrior Entity’s Avatar is kind of erratic, since he ‘knows’ you’re dead, so he’s trying to cover that up with stuff a guy named Kevin Norton suggested, like saving cats out of trees, or dealing with weapons of mass destructions, or fighting Endbringers.”

“How are you communicating with it? We can’t get more than a pulse of feeling,” said Eidolon.

Amber shrugged. “No idea.”

**[Confusion. Query.]**

“Uhh, they’re Conflict Engines?”

**[Confusion.]**

“Huh. Well, in that case, I think I understand why High Priest was so low on energy.” Seeing the Cauldron capes’ confusion, Amber explained: “Eden hadn’t created the Endbringers, and they’re linked to Eidolon’s shard, so I think the reason Eidolon’s running out of energy so fast when he’s actually borrowing energy from other shards is because his shard ended up creating them so he could test himself.”

“What.”

“Yeah, Eidolon, you need therapy. So do all parahumans, but hey, they’re not all linked to creatures known for body counts on the level of ‘cities’, so you’re the immediate priority.”

**[Comprehension. Amusement.]**

“I mean, it is ironic, but I wouldn’t personally find it funny. And on that note, are you willing to help us with  **[Warrior]** and  **[Loner]** ?” Amber asked.

**[Agreement. Impatience.]**

“Yeah, yeah, I get it. Gimme a sec, let’s try Limelight’s healing first.” Amber focused on the feeling of warmth inside her that she associated with Limelight’s healing power, then for lack of a better term, pushed it out to Eden.

For a timeless instant, Amber felt the vastness of Eden and their head pounded with pain, but their regeneration picked up and they shivered as they returned to herself.

The statue shifted, flowing and shifting as it refined itself into a human form. “Thank you.”

Amber blinked. “Huh. I did not see that coming.”

Eden’s form gave Amber a vaguely amused look. “I am  **[Thinker]** , were you not expecting me to be able to speak once I built myself vocal cords?”

“Zion never speaks,” replied Alexandria, admittedly brusquely. “Now, I don’t know about you, but I have no idea where we are and I have responsibilities back on Earth, so if you don’t mind…”

“Of course.” And just like that, the four of them were back in the lab, Amber’s hand still on Eidolon’s arm.

Hero, Legend, and Contessa also jumped at Eden’s appearance. “Who are you?” asked Legend, already building a laser in his hand.

“It appears that Amber made a friend,” said Eidolon.

* * *

Amber sighed, flopping back onto the newly-uncovered bed (that for some reason Hero had brought to Brockton Bay, because apparently it was important to have the Protectorate’s best tinkers in the same city? Bureaucrats were weird) and covering her face with her hands. “Ugh, maybe I shouldn’t have done so much in my first day back.”

There was a quiet “pop”, and then: “Yeah, you probably shouldn’t, but hey! At least you got plenty of content for the readers, even if some of them think you’re rushing.”

“Jesus fuck!” Amber rolled off the bed, then stopped in a three point stance, having recognized the voice chirping at her. “Dammit, Mouse, I thought you’d have learned to knock at some point.”

“Yeah, well, this is funnier.” The cheesiest hero around shrugged.

“Only you, Mouse. Only you,” Amber sighed, looking at the rodent-themed hero as well as her red-hooded companion. “Care to introduce me to your friend?”

The other cape reached down and pulled Amber to her feet with one arm, who just then realized that Mouse’s new friend stood head and shoulders over her nearly six feet, and even taller over Mouse’s 5’5”. “Hi, I’m Backhand, formerly known as Ravager. Mouse helped me discover an extra aspect of my power that makes me a fairly effective healer, and things just kind of… went from there.”

Mouse Protector wrapped her arms around Backhand’s torso. “I just knew I had to introduce my girlfriend to my newly-resurrected role model, as well as the hero who convinced me to recruit her! She couldn’t brie-lieve it, so I figured that if she saw it in person…”

Amber chuckled at the pun, then frowned, a thought occurring to her. “Hey, how’d you know I was back?”

“PHO was blowing up after some people saw you at a Brockton Bay high school, so I called up Hero to double check that you really were back.”

Amber sighed. “Of course it is. Show me?”

After a few minutes of scrolling, Amber sighed. “Well, that was faster than I expected.”

* * *

**Welcome to the Parahumans Online Message Boards**

You are currently logged in,  Mouse Protector (Verified Hero)

You are viewing:

  * Threads you have replied to
  * AND Threads that have new replies
  * OR private message conversations with new replies
  * Thread OP is displayed
  * Ten posts per page
  * Last ten messages in private message history
  * Threads and private messages are ordered by user custom preference.



■

**Topic: Stitch in Time Back?**

**In: Boards ► Brockton Bay ► Heroes**

**Bagrat** (Original Poster) (The Guy in the Know)

Posted on January 3, 2011:

So, uh…

Sounds like Stitch in Time has been seen again, for the first time since Ellisburg.

Current public knowledge is that they got involved in some kind of incident at Winslow.

Either someone’s the world’s dumbest cosplayer (I mean, come on. Half of the BB PRT is made of Ellisburg vets) or they’re actually back.

Edit: Assault’s been seen talking with them, then they vanished. Looks like the real deal.

Edit 2: Hero himself came to PHO to verify that yes, Stitch in Time is back. Holy Shit.

**(Showing Page 79 of 113)**

**► Hero** (Verified Hero) (Triumvirate Member)

Replied on January 3, 2011:

I can hereby confirm that Stitch in Time is alive and in Brockton Bay. No further information is forthcoming at this time.

**► Mouse Protector** (Verified Hero)

Replied on January 3, 2011:

Oh, yes. You’d cheddar believe we’re gonna be sticking to her like me on puns.

**► xxVoidCowboyxx** (Temp Banned)

Replied on January 3, 2011:

Pics or it didn’t happen.

**► Assault** (Verified Hero)

Replied on January 3, 2011:

Can’t do pics, but I can confirm that I sent her to talk to the Director. All I ask is that the light of my life @Battery tells me all the details.

**► AllSeeingEye** (Unverified Cape)

Replied on January 3, 2011:

Void, stop asking for pictures. There’ll be a press brief soon enough if you really need a photo.

**► xxVoidCowboyxx** (Temp Banned)

Replied on January 3, 2011:

**[Deleted]**

That’s enough, Void. No speculating on cape identities. -Tin_Mother

**► GStringGirl**

Replied on January 3, 2011:

I’m glad she’s back, she’s always been my favorite hero.

**► Reave** (Verified PRT Agent)

Replied on January 3, 2011:

I can confirm that Stitch in Time came to have a discussion with Director Piggot, Miss Militia, and Battery.

**► Bagrat** (Original Poster) (The Guy in the Know)

Replied on January 3, 2011:

Original post updated to reflect @Hero’s confirmation of Stitch in Time’s return.

**► Winged_One**

Replied on January 3, 2011:

I wonder how she came back after 10 years? We all thought she was dead after Ellisburg.

**End of page.** **1** **…** **77** **,** **78** **,** **79** **,** **80** **,** **81** **…** **112** **,** **113** **.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so as for why Contessa can’t Path Amber but she got a few bits of things involving Amber: the combination of Fortuity and Nick Campbell’s powers is mostly working subconsciously, at this point, acting as her own pseudo-PtV and, more importantly, blocking other precog-style Thinkers, with a couple of exceptions (Alexandria and Lisa could still read her using their style of Thinker power, for instance, and Calvert’s power is a weird precog that Amber’s power isn’t actively quashing), but it’s not sure if the Loner Entity is still connected to its shards and is no-selling PtV until it figures that out, but it decided that Contessa would be the most efficient way to drive the conversation forward, so it fed her power a step via complicated precog methods to see how it would react. In no way is it because Amber’s nature as “empowered by Calamity” reads as an Entity, nor is she becoming one. Or is it?
> 
> Enigmatic response aside, I do have something I want to clarify: this is a fanfic. As such, it’s not gonna be canon-compliant. I already mentioned how I’m shuffling some events around, like Hero’s encounter with the Siberian and Nilbog Triggering, and there’s some other things that are shown as not canon compliant (such as the extra ENE members, and the decision that in this world we do have confirmation that Eidolon made the Endbringers), and I’m not planning on sticking too closely to canon going forward either, so just… keep that in mind.
> 
> Also, kudos (hehehehe ao3 jokes) to anyone who figures out where I’m taking the boost to Ravager’s power from!


	4. Interlude 1: Piggot, Mouse, and Cauldron

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ripples in the pond

Emily Piggot was… disconcerted, to say the least. A tangible reminder of Ellisburg in Stitch in Time, costume still torn from whatever Nilbog had had latch onto her, on its own, but her attitude…

She had spent some time working with the Tinker even before Ellisburg, as part of her initiative to strengthen ties between the Protectorate and the PRT, and she'd always been motivated.

But today, she looked driven, in the same way that a monster truck about six inches from totaled yet being pushed to win the rally was.

Emily might not have been the best at understanding capes, but she hadn't gotten to be a regional PRT director by being an idiot. Speaking of which…

"How the hell did we miss the situation with Hess?" she growled, seated at a conference table with Armsmaster, Miss Militia, Calvert, and Stranger.

"Best guess? A combination of lower-downs covering for her and not expecting it," replied Stranger.

She spared a moment to be glad she had managed to push through the regulation allowing parahumans with abilities not particularly suited for combat to remain in the PRT (albeit not in Directorship roles, leading to Costa-Brown stepping down from her position as Chief Director when she realized her incredible mental acuity was actually a Thinker power) thanks to the sympathy surviving Ellisburg had bought them. Stranger's thinkertech-not-tinkertech equipment helped them keep up with the gangs, even if Allfather and Iron Rain were semiretired and Lung's Pan-Asian Collective was mostly an anti-Empire force, and Calvert's binary timelines optimized their operations like nothing she'd ever seen, plus he was making noise about recruiting a small-time thief to be another Thinker on the force.

"I'm inclined to agree," said Calvert (forcefully dragging her back into the conversation at that). "At this point I think we should go back through the ranks with a fine-toothed comb to see what else we missed. Tattletale might be able to help with that, although I'm admittedly not sure we could trust her with that immediately."

Emily nodded. "Table the recruitment for now, and if something comes up in mid-audit we'll revisit things. Now, for the other wrench in the works."

Armsmaster nodded. "The loss of Shadow Stalker is unfortunate, but the return of Stitch in Time is… incredible. Her power escalation is sufficient that within a matter of months I can see her matching Lung in raw power, to the point where we could theoretically wipe the Empire, Merchants, and Capo's organization off the board. That would leave us with the ability to negotiate with Lung's PAC on stronger ground and perhaps officially induct their capes as an independent hero team."

Miss Militia frowned. "That might… well, I'm not sure if it'll take that long for her power level to reach Lung, but that's not our immediate priority in regards to the situation."

"Agreed. Her mental state is much more of a concern." Piggot turned to glare at Armsmaster. "When we met with her this morning, she was intense to a degree that is abnormal for her. She let slip some things that led us to believe that she's emotionally unstable."

"She's moving too fast, even for her." Miss Militia cleared her throat, then continued: "She's always been one for ambitious efforts, but this… She's working too fast, even for her, and I don't think she's had any time to mentally unwind from Ellisburg, either. Mouse might be able to say more after she's had some time to interact with Stitch."

Emily Piggot glared at Armsmaster, reminding him that, despite her being out of the field since she got caught in one of Shatterbird's attacks, she still had a core of iron. "You will act as though Stitch in Time does not intend to remain in this city. Am I clear?"

"Crystal," the Tinker ground out.

"Excellent. In that case-" Piggot was interrupted by her phone ringing.

"What is it?"

"Director, we just got word from Brockton Bay Police Department. Sophia Hess disappeared from police custody an hour and a half ago."

The special operative-turned-bureaucrat clenched both her teeth and her fist for a long moment, then sighed explosively. "Perfect. Just what we needed." After a moment of thought, she added "Get all you can about the incident."

"Yes, director." The line clicked off.

Miss Militia sighed. "Let me guess, Hess got away?"

Piggot nodded, lips pursed.

"Wonderful."

* * *

Mouse Protector was… worried.

Not for herself, no. Being a hero without a major Brute rating led to a certain disregard for personal safety that precluded being really concerned for one's own safety.

No, she was worried for Amber.

The no-longer-Tinker was… well, Mouse wouldn't say that Amber wasn't themself, but they were acting with a degree of both desperation and resignation that she hadn't come to associate with the purple-clad hero.

Case in point:

"What do you mean, Shadow Stalker escaped?" Amber sighed. "Great, now I have to deal with that one running around and fucking things up."

"What do you mean?" asked Mouse, who was currently doing a single-handed handstand on Backhand's shoulder to try and provide some comic relief.

"Shadow Stalker is… well, she got press-ganged into the Wards after she got caught almost killing someone, and she resents that. She's also sadistic, to the point where she's been tormenting an unpowered student for at least 18 months which all capped off with the potential trigger event of being crammed into a locker full of what a good prosecutor could probably talk into a charge of use of a bioweapon. Add to that the fact that she's damn good at hit and run attacks plus uses a ranged weapon anyways and we've got a recipe for fuckedness." Amber pinched the bridge of her nose. "I'm trying to figure out a power that counters her Breaker form, but electricity is actually pretty hard to get."

The ex-Ward did a pratfall forward, managing to curl into a roll before she hit the ground. Backhand, in contrast, just sighed at her partner's theatricality. "Well, I don't know about you, but it sounds to me like you need a day off."

Sometimes, Mouse could just kiss Backhand. Fortunately enough, they were in a relationship, so it was more than acceptable to do so, so she did.

Amber blinked. "What?"

Backhand frowned, thinking. "You haven't actually had any time off since before Ellisburg, have you?"

"What?" Had a telepath been looking at her at this moment, they would have seen something remarkably similar to the blue screen of death.

"Aw, man. We broke Amber!" Mouse pouted. "Dear, do the poke heal thing."

Backhand rolled her eyes fondly, then poked Amber's cheek, under her mask. Then, she blinked, and laid her palm on Amber's face. "Fatigue toxins to the nine, no sleep in what feels like years, and lingering bio-toxins… probably from whatever Nilbog tagged her with. Fuck. I need to take this all now, then we need to get you a day off ASAP." Her hand glowed red for a moment, then tension in the lines of Amber's body seeped away in time with the fading glow.

Amber pressed one palm to her eye, then scrunched up her face and shook herself. "Wow, that felt weird. What was it?"

"I can… sort of take in damage from others and use that to mark them the same way that my inflicted injuries do, and then give that damage to others later. But never mind that. Mouse, we're dragging her out on the town now."

"So like the anti-King, or… no, they don't have Hayes' books here," Amber mumbled. "Still, I don't know why the regen didn't touch that."

"Eh, let's all get changed first." Mouse shrugged, ignoring whatever it was that Amber was going on about. "We might not be the most famous, but we don't want to have to deal with paparazzi."

Once the no-longer-older hero was out of sight, Mouse turned to her out-of-costume partner and blinked. "Holy fuck, she needs a break. She really hasn't slept since-"

"Since Ellisburg, at least. She's probably got PTSD of some flavor or another, and whatever it is that got her all bothered, it's probably a really big thing. She's had a massive spike of cortisol that's been ongoing for at least a day, and I have no idea how that's not caused any permanent damage yet."

"Hot damn. Intervention time?"

"Agreed." Backhand sighed. "It's been a while since I was in Brockton Bay, bit the Boardwalk's at least decent?"

"Ooh, maybe we could go to Fugly's!"

"You're still barred from the Challenger after putting down three in one sitting."

"Aw. Well, at least we can drag her there."

Once Stitch in Time was in her Amber clothes (loose black pants not dissimilar to her costume's, plus a graphic tee and a hoodie with an odd eye pattern on the arms), the more active hero pair dragged her to the boardwalk.

Seeing the tension in Amber's body slowly decrease as they strolled down the Boardwalk was… nice, but Mouse and Backhand both understood that there'd be much more to come before the black-haired hero could put down the (figurative) crushing burden on her back.

* * *

"So, what has Stitch in Time revealed?" asked the Number Man.

"Indirectly, she has provided a solution to the problem that is Scion in returning Eden to life and… sharing some kind of ability, what ability is unclear," said Alexandria.

"Regeneration. It defies both the conservation laws and entropy's iron grip on reality." The entirety of Cauldron turned to stare at Eden's avatar. "They have other powers similarly defiant of multiversal constants like entropy."

The ex-Slaughterhouse member blinked, hundreds of thousands of variables running through his head as he altered the mental models he was working with all in the span of seconds. "I see. Am I the only one who finds this a little too convenient? A parahuman comes out of a ten year coma, knowing how to deal with Eidolon's flagging powers and turn an Entity to our side? It does seem outlandish."

"Campbell and Fortuity." Seeing confusion at her apparent non sequitr, Eden explained. "She has two paired powers running subconsciously, they take her desired outcome and manipulate reality to better support her efforts. I believe your rating system would call it either a Shaker or Thinker power."

Alexandria twitched, her parahuman self control faltering for an instant, and a number of dents that in no way bore a resemblance to her fingers appeared on the table. Honest. "What."

Hero snorted. "That explains some things." Seeing everyone staring at him, he explained: "Everything had a habit of coming up aces for them. Combine that with their incredible guessing ability… well, I'm not surprised that that's an actual ability."

"But… it works on humans, it just did, so it must be a Master ability," said Alexandria.

"Like Glory Girl's Shaker aura?" replied Legend evenly.

Contessa laughed once before Alexandria could reply. "Oh, that's how she did it! That's how she got around the Eidolon limitation on Path to Victory."

The Thinker nodded, silver-glowing hair shifting over a suit that matched Contessa's. "Indeed, it is a powerful ability. It also allowed her to make the connection between Conflux's energy charging power and Eidolon's ailing shard." Eden grinned. "Your power over the Conflict Engines has been removed, but your shard has been granted more energy to keep up with your more normal rate of energy consumption."

Eidolon nodded. "Thank you." Then, turning to Alexandria, he nodded again. "I've gone through what happened with a number of Thinker powers, it's all on the level. The most it does is help us make logical leaps or brings up relevant memories."

The only female member of the Triumvirate frowned, then subsided. "Very well. If you're sure."

"I am."

"Good. In that case, let's begin bringing Eden up to date on our activities. We'll begin with the power sales…"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that’s that! I think I’ve given enough information on the situation with Ravager/Backhand’s power for people to guess it, at this point.
> 
> Read, review, and enjoy! Have a nice day.


	5. Walking the Board

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mouse's efforts bear fruit, before something goes wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warning: homophobic, racial, and ableist slurs.
> 
> It’s Hookwolf, so…

Amber gave Mouse - Maya in civilian clothes - a level look. “I thought you remembered I hated doing people things.” The Boardwalk was more than crowded enough, even in January, to cause Amber’s paranoia to twig.

The smallest hero in the group of three (clad in a Mouse Protector t-shirt, to deflect suspicion, as she said) gave Amber a guileless smile. “I did, it’s just that we needed to get you out of your work environment, and the best place we could get here in Brockton was here.”

“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry we didn’t think to go to the local branch and get their suggestions for what they thought might work out for… this kind of thing,” said Backhand, in the simple tank top and jeans that Maya promised were typical for her civilian identity as Felicia.

Amber sighed. “Fine, but… well, next time, please try and think about that before you get things rolling.”

“Yes, next time we’ll make the decision to hold an intervention with more prep time than a week for the author to brainstorm and a few hours to mull it over in the story,” deadpanned Felicia.

“Wow, I didn’t think you were such a big fan of the wet fish of sarcasm, especially when applied facially.”

Maya laughed. “Wow, you two are so funny when you get like this! I’m glad I got the chance to introduce you to each other.”

“Me too, Mouse. Me too.”

_ “Stitch in Time,” said Hero, grinning, “I’d like you to meet Mouse Protector.” _

_ Amber looked up from manipulating the sensitive electronics in what was probably going to be a force field generator to see a slender young woman (a couple of years younger than Amber, if she had to guess) with dark skin and frizzy hair, with a helmet decorated with two stylized mouse ears under her arm. _

_ “Hey, I’m…” After a pause for thought, aided by both her probably-a-Thinker-power intuition and her meta-knowledge, she continued: “I’m Amber. You’re one of the Wards, right?” _

_ “Yup! I’m Maya, nice to meet you,” she chirped, bouncing on the balls of her feet. _

_ Amber turned to Hero and gave the Tinker a dry look. “I thought you said you were introducing me to one of the Wards, not the physical embodiment of the concept of a sugar rush.” _

_ “Hey!” Maya pouted, crossing her arms while maintaining her hold on her helmet. _

_ Amber laughed, then patted the diminutive teleporter on the head. “Relax, kid. It’s nice to have someone like you around. It’s a breath of fresh air around here, with Mr. Tall, Blonde, and Brooding over here.” They pointed their thumb at the armored Tinker at this. _

_ Hero sighed. “Why did I think this was a good idea?” _

_ “Because you wanted your two proteges to meet?” The Mover grinned at Hero in a way that implied that butter would be just as safe in her mouth as in a fridge. _

_ Amber grinned at the Ward. She was a good kid, and they hardened their resolve that the Nine wouldn’t touch her, come hell or highwater. _

“Hey, Amber?” The Trump blinked, dragged out of her reverie by Mouse. “You okay? You kinda spaced out there.”

“Fine, Maya. Just… remembering the good old days.” They smiled at Maya.

Maya eyed Amber cautiously, more calculation in her gaze than she’d let out in her heroic persona or even outside it under normal circumstances. “Really.”

“Yeah, Maya. Remembering when Hero first introduced us.” There was a bit of a chiding tone in Amber’s words now, like “come on, don’t you understand?”.

Maya blinks, then laughs. “Yeah, I can see that.”

* * *

The trio, not really knowing what’s what on the Boardwalk beyond the obvious, eventually made it to Fugly Bob’s. Maya has to be reminded repeatedly that she can’t get a Challenger, but otherwise they order and get seated more or less without incident.

“Hey,” says Amber after finishing her burger and most of her fries, “Whatever happened to the D&D game we were running?”

Maya frowned, then snapped her fingers. “The boss kinda stopped running it after Ellisburg, so we got Jamie to pick up DM duty.” Amber nodded, glad that Chevalier had stepped up on that front. However…

“You know, you can call him Henry now, I’d bet. You’ve logged more than enough time for that.”

Felicia nodded. “He’s said as much, dear.”

Maya sighed. “I know, I know, but… well, it just feels weird as fuck to call him that over… well, you know.”

“Yeah, I get that,” said Amber. “But hey, at least we have the chance to call him by his name this time.”

Maya blinks. “What?”

Amber winced. “What… what did you know about my Thinker event that preceded my awakening?”

“Not much. Why?” asked Felicia.

Amber pursed her lips and waggled her head a bit, thinking. “Eh… it’s complicated, but uh…” Amber lowered her voice at this. “Both the two of you and Henry would have been taken out by the Nine. The Siberian would have gotten him when he lost his leg, and Bonesaw would have gotten to the two of you sometime around now.”

The both of them blinked, shocked, then they looked at each other and came to some sort of conclusion that Amber is decorous enough not to guess at.

The pause lasted long enough to become awkward, but before any of them could speak, the door swung open and the room filled with… Something. It felt like a pressure inside Amber’s head that quickly swelled into a headache that had her pressing her palms to her eyes, but the other two just swiveled with exasperation in their eyes. “Young lady,” said Felicia, “Control yourself!”

Victoria Dallon’s head swiveled to the trio and she blinked owlishly. “What?”

“Supress-” Amber winced as something in her ears started ringing, and Limelight’s regeneration bloomed inside her chest like the warmth from drinking a fresh cup of tea before the pain receded somewhat. “Supress your aura.”

The blonde brawler blinked, then closed her eyes, and after a moment the pressure in Amber’s head receded. “Thank you.”

Behind Victoria, two people blinked, both surprised. One was a relatively tall, muscular, blonde and conventionally attractive teenaged guy, and the other was a shorter young woman with frizzy brown hair, freckled and (Amber mentally apologized to Mouse for this) mousy.

“What happened?” asked the woman who was probably Amy Dallon.

“Sorry about that,” said Amber, waving her hand in a vaguely apologetic manner. “I’ve… had a history of bad migraines, I guess Miss Dallon’s aura is one of them.”

The cape winced. “Sorry about that.”

Amber shook her head. “Nah, don’t worry about it, besides maybe working on getting that trick under control.”

She laughed awkwardly. “I’ll do what I can.”

“Good luck on that one.” Amber slipped the last few fries into their mouth, chewed thrice, then swallowed. “Alright, Maya, Felicia,” the two of them were even faster eaters than Amber and had finished much earlier, “Ready to go?”

“Yup!” chirped Maya, and Felicia nodded.

“Alright then.” Amber checked her watch, then nodded. “I think it’s about time we went and saw that show from Parian.” She waved at Victoria. “Have a nice day, kid.”

“You’re calling me a kid?” She seems some combination of indignant and amused.

“Older than I look,” grinned Amber. They gave the Alexandria package a flippant, two-fingered salute. “See ya.”

* * *

Amber applauded with the rest of the crowd, with Parian’s cloth doll-constructs taking a bow on the stage opposite Fugly’s that she was performing on today, when Maya turned to her and raised an eyebrow.

“What’s up?”

“Feeling better?”

Amber nodded. “Yeah. Thanks, Maya. I really needed this.”

“Glad to help.”

And of course, now was the time that the Nazi made of swords chose to explode onto the scene.

“Everybody out!” Hookwolf roared, and the normals took his advice, even as a number of unpowered Empire thugs, as well as Cricket, walked up.

“Maya, get the suits.” Amber and Felicia both followed the crowd as Maya patted her partner’s muscular shoulder, then poked Amber’s cheek, then vanished with a squeak.

After a moment, Backhand’s armored silver-and-black outfit squeaked into existence, and almost immediately after, an undamaged version of Amber’s coat appears around her shoulders, green-accented purple mask clipped to the front. The Trump took the half-face mask and secured it over her forehead, making sure her vision was minimally obscured by the sides of the holes, then tugged on Legacy’s gravity manipulation to rise into the air.

“Hey, y’all. You know how you stop a Nazi from choking?” Hookwolf turned from his position looming over Parian and glared angrily at Amber, who was already calling up a thin layer of Limelight’s fields over her hand.

“Take your boot off their throat.” The expression on their face could be called a smile in the same way that a katana is a kitchen knife.

“Well, looks like the fag spic’s back,” whirred Hookwolf. “Time I did what that retard Nilbog couldn’t do and punch your ticket.”

“Better than you have tried, buddy,” snarled Amber.

She burst forward, then slammed downwards under a few extra g’s, landing directly on the Changer Nazi and pushing Parian away with a thin sheet of green-white light. “Get to safety, kid,” snapped Amber.

Sparing the time it took to watch Parian escaping cost Amber, as Hookwolf slammed the hero sideways with a limb of shifting blades and chains.

“I’m gonna enjoy this one, you little bitch,” snarled Hookwolf.

Amber reached out and tore the heat from his metal, leaving ice to form from his blades and slow him down for the time it takes him to grind through it.

Amber pulsed out a blast of heat at the Nazi, then slammed a field-covered arm into his inner workings, leaving his blades to blunt themselves on Limelight’s inexorable defense.

“Gotcha, motherfucker!” The hero wrapped Hookwolf in the fields, then crunched him down, bending and warping his blades in the process.

Maintaining the barrier holding Hookwolf, Amber turned to the rest of the Empire foot soldiers and watched, bemused, as Mouse sheathed her baton-saber, the last of the skinheads dropping to the ground as Backhand managed to brush a hand against Cricket’s calf, leaving a gray gash behind and sending the Empire cape to the floor, leg buckling under her in just the right way for her to slam her head into the floor and go limp.

When Armsmaster rolled up five minutes later, he found the three capes sitting on the (less tightly wrapped) form of Hookwolf eating ice cream.

“What kept you so long?” asked Mouse, completely shameless.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, this chapter did not want to come out of my head.
> 
> Didn’t have too much else to say tonight, so happy 2021!


	6. Brie-lieve it or not

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mouse Protector named the chapter, okay?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don’t think I mentioned this last time, but I buffed Mouse Protector’s teleportation so she can teleport things to her marks, like clothes. Or cheese. (I’ll write this omake eventually I promise)

“Aha! Got it!” said Amber, blue-white electricity crackling around her in place of Limelight’s fields. This particular break from trying to salvage Canary’s case had been quite productive.

Mouse poked at it, then giggled as her hair stood on end. “Ooh, nice. How’d you do it?”

Amber waggled her head, putting together a mostly comprehensible answer. “Ehh… basically what I did was charge Limelight’s force field with electricity. Can’t use his actives while I’m using Sourcefield’s, but the regen still works.”

Mouse frowned. “Actives?”

Amber winced. “Oh, right. Sorry, that’s my term for abilities I have to turn on, like Obliteration’s absorption or Legacy’s gravity fuckery.”

Mouse nodded. “Ahh, okay. Makes sense.” The Mover waited a beat, then continued. “And the fact that electricity is one of the things that interferes with Shadow Stalker’s ability has nothing to do with things.”

Amber reminded herself that Mouse was much more shrewd than her ham-and-cheese persona made her seem before responding. “That it does, plus electricity is a generally useful ability to have. The readers probably already sussed that out, though.”

Mouse sighed, then put her hand on Amber’s shoulder. “That’s not what I was getting at. We’re… worried about you. You haven’t had the chance to destress after Ellisburg, and now you’re… throwing yourself into your work.”

Amber sighed. “I have damn good reason to be worried, but… hang on.” Amber pulled her phone out and dialed a number.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Hero. It’s me. I was thinking about bringing Mouse and Backhand in on… well, the everything.”

“Are you sure?”

Amber closed her eyes, then sighed. “No, but I trust them, and I’ve got a good feeling about this. They’re trying to help.”

Hero paused for a moment. “Alright. Get them into costume, then call for a Door. It’s tempting fate to discuss this on Bet.”

“Understood. Thanks, Hero.” Amber hung up, then turned to Mouse. “Get suited and booted with Backhand. That is, if you want to take the red pill and see how deep this rabbit hole goes.”

In an almost cartoonish cloud of smoke, Mouse vanished, then reappeared with Backhand. “Ready to go!”

“Did you just- no, never mind.” Amber shook her head. “Alright, then. Door to… wherever Hero thinks we should handle this.”

A flat plane of Cauldron’s base decided to appear in the middle of Amber’s workshop. On the other side stood Hero, Alexandria, Contessa, and the silver-skinned form of Eden.

“Come in, Mouse Protector and Backhand. We have much to talk about,” said Contessa.

“Pfft,” laughed Mouse. “Wow, you really playing up the evil cape angle up.”

“Eh, more Morpheus.” When Mouse looked at Amber, the Trump shrugged. “I saw the Matrix before I got involved with all this shit.”

“Sure. Hey, when we get done with all the ominous stuff, you’re gonna take a break, understand? Maybe catch up with Militia and the old crowd, or talk that one ENE guy whose name is Dungeon Master or something into starting up a game for us, or maybe letting us into a preexisting one.” Mouse took Amber by the wrist and looked her into her eyes, searching for something. “It doesn’t even really matter what, as long as you’re relaxing. Promise us that.”

Amber sighed, shoving down the (admittedly plausible, from her perspective) fear that Mouse would never want to do anything with her again. “ _ Ya prometo _ , Maya. I’ll be doing something, if… Well, you’ll see.”

Backhand raised an eyebrow behind her red-accented black mask. “Something you’d like to share with the class?”

Amber shook her head. “Nah, just… Don’t hate them, us, whatever, don’t hate us too much once you hear what we have to do, what’s been done.” She turned, opening the door. “I’ve already explained it once, I don’t have the spoons to do it again. For what it’s worth...” Amber’s composure faltered. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.” She swung the door closed behind her as she left.”

“That was ominous.”

“And it’s not all that far off, you two. She might not have been involved directly in what we’ve done, she feels culpable because… well, it’s complicated. Come on through so we can tell you the tale of Cauldron.” Hero beckoned the two heroes through, and they came, the gap in dimensional barriers closing behind them. “Now I know a lot of people would advocate starting from the beginning, but… well, given the circumstances, it’d probably best to start with where Amber’s part in the story began.”

_ “So you’re the new Tinker.” Hero looked the disheveled form of the young… person in front of him. “I’m-” _

_ “Call me Amber. You’re Hero, fourth founding member of the Protectorate and Caul- shit.” _

_ He felt the blood drain from his face. “How do you know that name.” _

_ The younger Parahuman’s hand stiffened into a claw, then relaxed. “I have to know that you’ll keep this under your hat if you can. Don’t tell Rebecca, don’t tell David, don’t tell Paul, don’t tell Contessa, unless it’s in extremis and you actually have to tell them.” _

_ “I…” _

_ “I need you to promise me that. Everything I’ve read and heard says you’re the heart of the Protectorate, and a good man. I… fuck. Okay. I’ll tell you, just… keep it quiet.” _

_ “Keep what quiet?” _

_ “I’m from a world where all of this- Earth Bet, the Protectorate, Cauldron, Scion, everything- it’s all known to us through the lens of a work of fiction called Worm. I’m not saying it isn’t real, it’s just that we know about it from fiction. But I know too much about this world. I know how you die, how Alexandria dies, how Eidolon dies, and how Scion dies. Well, at least how it would have gone if not for me.” _

_ “How?” Hero asked, gobsmacked. _

_ “Manton’s projection, pissing off a bug Master 5, Scion destroys his will to fight and Glaistig harvests him to keep fighting against Scion, and that same bug Master gets her Corona rearranged to control humans and using everyone dogpiles and gaslights him into a checkmate.” Amber sighed and pressed their palms against their eyes. “Look, it’s a long fucking road until 2013 where it ends. Cauldron… I’m not gonna say that they didn’t help, but after you bit it they went off the deep end.” _

_ “Okay, start from the beginning.” _

_ “No idea where that happened. I just woke up a couple days ago and I was here on Bet.” Amber frowned. “Or if you meant the fictional story, it began in a shitty high school in Brockton Bay... _

* * *

Mouse sat in the rafters, watching as Amber interacted with the Wards. She’d always thought that the way that people interacted with those they had power over said a lot about what kind of person they were, and she needed time to think about the purple-coated cape.

The recently-revived cape was actually doing quite well with them. Vista was the most drawn in by her story about a run-in with the Adepts that ended up like something out of a Looney Tunes cartoon, but all of the Wards were taken in to one degree or another. She was engaging with Clockblocker’s jokes as well, while balancing all the other Wards and making them feel included.

If not for Amber making eye contact when she came in, Maya wouldn’t have known that the Trump knew she was there. While they might have put out the air of the absentminded academic, they did see a lot more than they seemed to, even if they didn’t quite understand all the implications.

Still, both Maya and Felicia were extremely discombobulated by what Hero had told them. Scion, a world-ending entity depressed from the presumed death of Eden, the silver-colored Thinker? Amber actually from a universe where Earth Bet was more or less fictional, and all but immortal thanks to her power to boot?

If Mouse were inclined towards alcohol, she’d likely be looking for answers at the bottom of a bottle.

Besides, some of this didn’t add up.

Why did Amber feel so terrible about Cauldron’s excesses? She’d been mostly dead (slightly alive, giggled the part of Maya that made all the references) during most of the time, and based on the timeline Hero had given them she had only been a factor for about eight or nine months before Ellisburg, six of which had been as an active hero. Realistically speaking, if she didn’t want to go into her out of context knowledge, she couldn’t have properly changed Cauldron, even though from what Mouse had put together after the fact, she had been working towards this.

Why was her power so broken? Sure, she couldn’t use all of the facets of her power at once, but still, she had the abilities of an entire team’s worth of heroes, and she was getting more out of nowhere, like an inverse Eidolon.

Why was she so worried about Maya and Felicia having such a bad reaction to everything? Sure, it was a shock, but they were more than capable of bouncing back from this kind of thing. There was no reason for them to leave her to face this alo-

Oh.

That actually made some sense, since just about everything Amber had had before had been ripped away from them.

In that context, there was only one thing Mouse could do.

After popping down to Amber, Mouse gave an exaggerated yawn and stretched, popping her back. “Ugh, those bureaucratic meetings are so long! How do you handle them, Stitch?”

Mouse saw what little tension Amber was leaving visible leach out of her body language as they sighed. “Practice, Mouse.”

“Pish tosh!” Mouse waved her hand dismissively. “Anyways, kids, just needed to get Stitch over to meet with the grown-ups. We need to meet our co-workers to work well with them, anyways.”

“We do, do we?” Amber side-eyed Mouse, who reminded her (quite cheekily, at that) that butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.

“You bet! Come on, if we can get to GameMaster he can use his minions to gather the ranks.” Mouse all but dragged Amber out of the Wards’ area.

Once out of earshot of the Wards, Maya lowered her voice and said, “You saved our lives, we’re not gonna leave you high and dry.”

“Thank you.” Both heroes ignored the tears that may or may not have been in Amber’s eyes.

It took them about five minutes to find ENE’s resident Master, and then another two to convince him to gather the rest of the local Protectorate capes into a conference room by animating pixies from minifigures as messengers.

“I, uh… Thank you. You saved my daughter’s life on Monday.”

Amber eyed the gangly figure by her side, then nodded. “Anytime, sir.”

“None of that.” He shook his head, then lifted the green-painted helmet off his head, revealing his mussed (receding) black hair. “Please, call me Danny.”

“In that case,” the mask came off, “Call me Amber."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, that chapter really fought me hard. Sorry it’s late, that combined with having to get back to the swing of things after the holidays meant I was busier than normal.
> 
> Other than that, there’s not much more, so read review, enjoy, and have a nice day!


	7. Curls, Plates, and Stripes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things are picking back up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I’m going to put up a thing on SB/SV/my writeblr where I go over the powers that are divergent from canon at some point soon. It’s gonna include Danny, Taylor (since Danny got QA, she got a bud), Mouse, Ravager/Backhand, Heavyweight, and a couple more I’m going to introduce soon-ish. It’s also gonna include Iron Rain and Allfather since there’s not a whole lot of info in canon about their powers so I’m taking a bit of liberty with them.
> 
> A couple other things: For one, in this world the reason that Alexandria can’t get her eye healed is because of the Siberian’s power lingering in the wound, that’s the same reason Hero’s got a prosthetic (which, by the way, is a hard-light thing based on what Hero could wrangle out of Amber’s “force-field module” through the lens of his shard). He wasn’t using it when Amber popped back up in chapter 1 because he was doing some design work and thus sitting. Danny’s power was inspired by his Chessman incarnation from Constellations, but coming at it from a different direction, hopefully. Also, in case it wasn’t clear, Backhand is a rebranded Ravager. Danny doesn’t interact with the Wards like at all, so he doesn’t know their civilian identities, and he’s been careful to keep Taylor away from that part of his life because… well, you’ll see. I know that Hannah’s supposed to be in her 30s in 2011, but I’m taking a bit of liberty with the timeline so Amber can have interacted with the first Wards when they were still Wards. Last, Alexandria’s shard in this case is (Eden’s version of) the Champion shard.
> 
> Canon isn’t guaranteed to be followed from here on out, either, so be warned.

“...I’ve worked with some of you, but not others, but either way I’m looking forward to working with you all.” Amber’s eyes swept the room, alighting on each cape for a moment.

Miss Militia was, somewhat unsurprisingly, the first one to break the silence. “Good to have you back, Amber.”

Amber grinned at the Middle Eastern woman. Even though she’d been closest to Maya out of all the original Wards, she’d still had at least a cordial relationship with all of them. “Glad to be back. Gotta say, you’re taller than I remembered, little Hana.” It was true, the last time Amber had seen Hannah she’d been a rather short 15-year-old a couple of weeks before Ellisburg, so she’d had more than enough time to hit a last-minute growth spurt or two.

“And you’re just as tired as I remember you.” Hana patted Amber on the shoulder, then made eye contact. “You need to rest, Amber.”

“Mouse told you?”

“I have eyes, but yes, she asked me to help make sure you weren’t going too hard.”

Amber sighed, then nodded. “I’ll do what I can, but I’ve got a lot on my plate after 10 years of being more or less legally dead.”

Miss Militia nodded. “As long as you’re honestly trying.”

With that, the conversation finished, and Danny took advantage of that to drag Amber over to a man in a luchador-style mask and a circus strongman-style outfit. “Amber, this is Heavyweight.”

“Please, call me Kurt. You saved little Taylor, you get to call me by my name.”

Amber took his proffered hand and pumped twice. “Nice to meet you. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but back in 2000, Danny was a bigwig in the Dockworkers’ Association after the riots. How’d you end up here?”

“Well, that happened when the Empire attacked the Docks last year. Danny got cornered, but then he pulled the first minions and pushed them back. I ended up trapped between a bunch of shipping containers by Krieg, and he was about to drop another one on me, but I caught it and threw it back. We stuck around long enough to manage the transition, and also clear out the Boat Graveyard, but then we joined up.”

Amber raised her eyebrows. “That’s a hell of a power combo if it let you clear up the Graveyard.”

Kurt and Danny made eye contact, then nodded. “Kurt can lift and wield anything, plus he’s just about invincible, and I can transform minifigures into lifelike versions of them, a few at a time.”

“Damn. Those really are strong powers. Well, fair’s fair. At this point, my power is more or less just making more powers.”

The two ex-Dockworkers just blinked. “What.”

Amber nodded. “Yeah, it’s busted.”

Danny opened his mouth, but before he could respond, a phone in his side pocket went off. After a whispered conversation, he slipped it back into his pocket and started towards the door. “There’s… something weird with Taylor. Kurt, Amber, would you mind coming along?”

“Sure thing, Danny.”

“One sec.” Amber walked over to Mouse Protector, where she was having a conversation with Backhand and Miss Militia. “Am I still marked?”

“You bet! Why?”

“Just in case.” Amber followed Danny and Kurt off the Rig after changing into their civilian clothes, and while they made some small talk, their hearts weren’t in it, given the circumstances.

They were almost to the hospital before something occurred to Amber. “Hang on, why is Taylor at the hospital? I gave her regen for long enough to kill off just about any kind of infection she’d pick up from that mess.”

“Uhh…” Danny frowned. “Something about waiting until Panacea could make sure that she was completely clear? I don’t know, they insisted even after I told them she’d received parahuman healing, claimed it was standard operating procedure.”

“Hm. Interesting.” Something told Amber that there was more than meets the eye to this particular situation, but since Coil wasn’t a factor that they had to account for (hopefully), they weren’t sure what could be behind this. They’d probably get the lowdown on the situation in Brockton once they were done with the hospital, there was more than enough change just from Calvert being on the side of the angels to render a significant part of her out-of-context knowledge obsolete.

The Trump was jarred from her thoughts by the hum of Danny’s (well-loved) truck shutting off. She shook her head, then stood, stretching.

By the time they caught up to Danny and Kurt, he was already inside the hospital and getting directions to his daughter’s room. Since he ran out of the reception area, and both Amber and Kurt followed in his wake (with Amber offering an apologetic wave to the receptionist), none of them took special note of the man in a perhaps overtailored suit for an environment like this in the reception area, who (upon seeing Danny Hebert) pulled out his phone and connected to a number that, technically speaking, was not in the phone system.

The three Protectorate heroes slowed (skidded, in Danny’s case) to a halt outside Taylor’s room, and Danny burst in to find-

A green-white spectral copy of Danny, in his GameMaster outfit, hovered in front of Taylor’s bed.

“Dad?” asked Taylor? “What’s happening? Why are there two of you?”

Amber raised a finger as if to say “one moment”, then closed the door and wrapped them in a bubble of Sourcefield’s electrical field, imitating a Faraday cage. “Alright.”

Danny stepped forward. “So, what happened, as far as I know, is that you triggered with a parahuman power that’s based off your dear old dad’s.”

“How does this… ghost connect with GameMaster?”

Amber frowned, thinking, then snapped her fingers. “Your power pinged off of mine, taking information from my power to build yours. So, if I had to guess, you can imitate another cape’s powers with a projection.”

Taylor blinked. “What?”

“Your power is that you can make a copy of another cape, I think.” Kurt and Danny both nodded.

“Oh, okay. That makes sense.”

“Alright, Little Owl, can you turn off the projection?” asked Danny.

She closed her eyes for a moment, then with the sound of someone popping bubble wrap, the brightest source of light in the area was Amber’s pseudo-Faraday cage.

“I can still see it,” groaned Taylor.

“We can’t,” responded Kurt.

“Alright, now that that’s out of the way…” Amber looked to Danny.

“Right. I wanted to keep you separate from this world after your mother… after Krieg caused her crash, but now…” He hesitated.

Kurt took up from him. “It’d probably be a good idea to join the Wards. Both in terms of training and your safety.”

Taylor opened her mouth to respond, but was interrupted when Mouse Protector  _ pop _ ped into existence right next to Amber. She looked around, then sighed, relieved. “Good, it’s just a power thing. Listen, the Nine are attacking this small town out in Arizona… I think they called it Yuma.”

“Fuck. Roster?”

“Protectorate forces from Phoenix are on the way, but it’s gonna be at least half an hour before they get there.”

“No, roster of the Nine.”

“Uhh… Jack Slash, Bonesaw, Siberian, Burnscar, Hatchet Face, Shatterbird, Winter, Mannequin, Crawler.”

Amber pursed her lips, calculating, then nodded. “I should be able to help against some, at least. Hero’s encounter with Siberian, he survived by blocking her with my force fields, right?”

Mouse nodded.

“Great. I’ll be back at the Rig momentarily, you get back there and find me a picture.”

“Will do.” Mouse vanished.

Amber turned back to the other inhabitants of her field. “I’ll be back, just gotta go deal with the Nine. I’ll be back to help manage the Trump aspect of your power, if you want?”

Stunned, Taylor nodded. “Y-yes please.”

Amber turned her attention to Danny and Kurt. “You guys staying here?”

Danny looked at Taylor, then Kurt, then turned his attention back to Amber. “We will. Kick their ass for us.”

Amber grinned, and with a “It would be my genuine pleasure,” dispelled their Faraday cage. “Well, Taylor, I hope you get discharged soon.” With that, she turned and stalked out of the hospital, so wrapped up in her mental preparations that she didn’t notice the overdressed man watching her leave.

Once she was relatively far from the hospital, she ducked into an alleyway and teleported to the Rig.

“Sitrep,” snapped Amber, already sweeping her coat off of the chair it rested on.

“A couple on their way to Yuma stopped and called it in when they got to the outskirts and all the windows were blown out,” said Armsmaster. “Nearest Protectorate force is about 25 minutes out.

“Amber secured her hair back, then secured her mask to her face. “Anyone else coming?”

Backhand stepped back into the room, silvered areas of her costume glimmering as she handed Amber a picture to use to teleport to Yuma. “You bet.”

Mouse, from outside the room, called “Take Felicia with you, I’ll warp to her mark when I’m armed and armored!”

No one else took them up on the offer, so Amber switched Sourcefield’s power for Limelight’s fields, extended them over Backhand after putting their hand on the healer’s shoulder, then nodded. “Ah’ll be bahk,” she quoted, teeth bared in anticipation of the fight, and then the duo vanished in a pulse of shattered ceramic.

* * *

Alicia came to in a yellow-gold suit of armor, flat on her back and surrounded in glass shards.

She levered herself to her feet, went to peer out the window and froze when she saw the remains of the radio all over the room.

Shatterbird.

That meant the Nine were in town.

Ignoring the wall, she burst out the side of the building, trying desperately to remember some of the strategy she’d learned before having to leave her D&D group.

“Not so fast,” cackled a woman’s voice, and all of a sudden the warmth of an Arizona winter’s midday was replaced with a shivering cold.

Winter.

Alicia turned, and there she was, fur-trimmed blue covering ice-white sadism.

“Hmm… Fresh trigger? No matter, you’ll die all the same.” The villain’s eyes flared blue-white, and the cold spiked in time with pain in Alicia’s head.

But only for a moment- the inside of the armor glowed brighter, and she felt both warmed and out of pain.

She bared her teeth under the faceplate of her armor, then manifested a massive sword in one hand. “Not yet!”

The fresh trigger lunged forward, but Winter danced out of her range, gunshots cracking against the armor.

That is, until a golden spear manifested behind the Slaughterhouse member just in time for her to impale herself on it.

How had Alicia done that?

“Y-you…” Winter grimaced, then wrapped her hand around the spear.

Alicia swung her sword, and ended the psychotic Shaker’s run.

“Aww, but I was gonna kill her!”

She swung around, and her blood went cold in a way that had nothing to do with Winter’s power and everything to do with the fact that the Siberian and Bonesaw were staring her down.

She turned to run, but didn’t make it ten steps before she felt inhumanly strong hands on her arm.

Somehow, the Siberian didn’t tear her arm off, or cut through her armor like butter. This was cold consolation when the deadliest Brute on the planet backhanded her, snapping her arm even through the armor and slamming her into a building.

Immediately, the armor started to feel warm, dulling the pain and helping Alicia struggle upright.

She was only on her knees when the crack of shattering porcelain came from right in front of her and two figures appeared, both surrounded in a shimmering green layer of something. One was in the recognizable costume of Backhand, but the other was in a purple coat that Alicia remembered vaguely from her history class and PHO.

“Well, shit. Hi, Riley,” came the voice of Stitch in Time.

Alicia let herself fall backwards. She was safe, or at least as safe as she could be in the presence of the Nine, since she had the Tinker who built the shield that even the Siberian couldn’t get through, carried by Hero.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so the reason Taylor got a power that’s more like Noelle’s than QA normally is is because, while Amber’s power isn’t shard-based, it’s… close enough for her bud of QA to kinda-sorta ping off of and put together a Trump-influenced projection since it’s already used to managing multiple shard powers, albeit outside the cycle. I’d actually maybe say that, based on what Echidna’s power does in canon, that she had at least a partial connection to Eden’s version of Queen Administrator.
> 
> Other than that, I’m probably going to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 2k words per chapter going forward, since my schedule is a lot busier now than it was when I started this fic.
> 
> That’s all I have, so read, review, enjoy, and have a nice day.


	8. Schlachthaus None

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Okay, this pun I can't blame on Mouse, she's not on the scene yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I was actually thinking about how I’d go about getting some more esoteric powers from the ones that Amber has, and I’ve actually been thinking about abusing Conflux’s power for a couple of weeks before writing this chapter, especially for investiture effects like what Ballistic does or… well, you’ll see (or, at least, that’s how Amber will justify this ability).

“It’s ‘Bonesaw’ when I’m on the job, silly! But I have to say, I don’t know who you are. You look like Stitch in Time, but she’s dead,” said Riley, secure in the Siberian’s grasp.

Amber’s face split into a grin even as she surreptitiously sent Backhand to check on the gold-armored cape behind them. “That’s weird, kiddo, I don’t feel too dead.” She modulated the grin into something that was, hopefully, gentler. “And Bonesaw isn’t a good girl, not the way Mommy wanted. Riley was, and hopefully will be.”

The Siberian snarled, lunging forwards with her hand aimed for Amber’s eye before the Trump could say anything else.

It bounced off the green-white sheen of a force field a half inch from their skin.

“Now that was rude! Do you always interrupt people when they’re talking?” Amber quoted, snapping out a hand and wrapped it around the black-striped wrist. “Never mind, you’re not the one pulling the strings here.”

She threw the projection straight up with the help of Limelight’s field, then returned her attention to Riley, who was looking shaken. “Now, where was I?”

“Uncle Jack says I’m a good girl!”

“Uncle Jack isn’t the best judge of that, methinks. Now, how about-” This time, the Siberian tried to wrap her hand around Amber’s throat and tear it out, which succeeded on the first count but not the second.

“Goddammit, Manton, wait your fucking turn!” Amber backhanded the monochromatic murderer, leaving her wrapped in a layer of Limelight’s fields to keep her occupied. That done, Amber turned towards the pint-sized Slaughterhouse member. “Where were we, Riley?”

The diminutive blonde just screamed in rage and pointed, several somethings bouncing off her personal field with soft “ping” sounds.

“Backhand, can you knock her out if you touch her?” Amber whisper-asked.

“Why,” asked the Striker,  _ sotto voce _ , “would I want to do that?”

“Because she’s essentially been tortured and Mastered by Jack Slash into joining the Nine. Look, it’s… a long story.”

“If you’re absolutely sure…”

“Sure as I can be.”

“Alright.” The silver-clad Striker walked forward, and Amber belatedly replaced her covering of impenetrable shield for a share in Limelight’s regeneration.

“Riley, I know you’re hurting right now, but if you’ll let us help you-”

“No! Uncle Jack said you’re meanies, and I Believe Him!” Amber nodded to Backhand, absently noting the fact that somehow the Tinker had managed to capitalize the spoken word, and Backhand lunged, managing to land a solid touch and send the pint-sized terror into blissful unconsciousness.

Amber blinked as something occurred to them. “Hey, Backhand, what’s current policy about revealing the identity of the Nine?”

“Kill Order, so by all means.”

“Got it. Now, let’s go hunt down William Manton so I can see about hijacking the Siberian projection from him.” At this, the monochromatic murderous projection redoubled her efforts to get free from Limelight’s field, which produced about as much to show for her efforts as a snake trying to jump to Mars, which is to say, absolutely none.

“Wait, what the fuck now?”

“I… Oh, right. Well, yeah. Manton’s alive, if a little touched in the head… and also kinda-sorta mastered by Jack Slash like the rest of the Nine. Surprise?”

Backhand (and actually the armored cape, too) were staring blankly at Amber.

Amber sighed. “Just… take me at my word, right now. I’ve been working behind the scenes with the Triumvirate and WEDGDG, and that’s some of the intel I got about the Nine after popping back up. It’s a lot more complicated than that, but that’s the skinny on it.”

Even through the armor, the local cape managed to look incredibly lost. “What?”

“WEDGDG is the Protectorate’s affiliated Thinker tank.”

“Ah, okay.”

A distant rumbling reminded everyone that Crawler was still a threat. “Fuck, forgot about him.” Amber raised a hand and clicked on her com. “Console, patch me through to whoever’s running prep for the Nine-slaughtering.”

“We’re not doing any of that,” replied Assault. “There’s no one else joining you.”

“Fuck. Fine.” Amber snapped her com off, then barked out “Door to Legend.”

Doormaker’s signature portal opened, and the Triumvirate member blinked owlishly back. “What?”

“Bonesaw’s been captured, and Winter’s dead. More immediately relevant, I need you to track down Hatchet Face so we can use him to murder the shit out of Crawler.”

Legend frowned. “Are you sure?”

“Absolutely, as long as someone can get Hatchet Face there, you can hit Crawler with your Giant Fuck Off Laser Beams without worrying about his regen. And, uh… Doormaker, do we have a cell capable of containing Bonesaw until we get somebody to unfuck her head?”

Another hole in space opened, this time to the inside of a blank white cell, which Backhand carried Bonesaw into swiftly. By the time she’d emerged, Legend had already taken off, and then Mouse chose that moment to pop into existence. “What did I miss?” she asked brightly.

“Winter deceased, thanks to…” Amber thought for a moment. “We’ll call her Starlight for now,” she finished, jerking her thumb at the gold-armored figure. “Siberian captured, projector is next priority, and Bonesaw captured and removed.” Legend’s hunting Hatchet Face so we can kill Crawler with him, but otherwise we don’t know status of the rest of the Nine.

“Wait, projector?”

“William Manton, partially insane and partially Mastered by Jack Slash. I’m gonna try and yoink the Siberian.”

Mouse blinked, then readjusted. “Alright, what’s the plan for us?”

“Uh… can you teleport other people to your marks?”

Mouse nodded. “You bet!”

“Uhh… in that case, either hunt down Shatterbird or Burnscar. They’re the most mobile members left, and I’d personally-”

There was a crash of shattering glass and a flash of light in the sky, then, over the com, Legend’s voice rang out. “Shatterbird eliminated.”

“In that case, try and tag Burnscar, take her in non lethally since her power is fucking with her head. Your powers should be able to track her through her teleportation and catch up to her. As for Starlight… You can take it easy, if you want. You already survived multiple members of the Nine, I’m sure as hell not gonna make you stick around if you don’t want to.”

Mouse nodded, then jogged off, Backhand in tow.

“I’m… I’m sticking it out,” said Starlight.

Amber nodded. “In that case, stick with me for now. I’m gonna be experimenting with some powers, and I need someone to keep an eye out for the rest of the Nine approaching.

Amber leapt into the air and hovered for a moment, looking around, then flicked a hand and returned to the ground and gestured. “Come on, this way.” She started jogging in the same direction she flicked her hand, and after a moment, Starlight followed.

The duo stopped at a panel van with four deflated tires, and Amber tore off the driver’s side door to reveal a disheveled man whose head Amber promptly dropped their hand on. “Keep an eye out, I’m gonna be busy for a little bit.”

Of course, just as the Trump’s eyes closed, the blank-faced visage of Mannequin burst from the back of the van, four arms protruding from his torso with one significantly larger than the others.

To Alicia’s credit, she reacted swiftly, manifesting a longsword in her grasp and swinging it up to try and bisect the insane Tinker.

Unfortunately, he had already shot out an arm and dragged himself away, larger arm pointed at the gold-armored fighter and blasting a projectile that bounced off her head after rocking it back.

She lunged forward, swinging her sword wildly, and the serial killer managed to stay ahead of her every time, releasing repeated shots that, had he been willing to give her the time, she could have set a watch to.

That is, until the spear sprouting beneath him knocked him forward into the path of the blade, which scratched his casing and knocked him aside.

“Need something heavier,” Alicia grumbled, and her power obliged, replacing the sword with an axe almost as tall has her lofty 6’6.

While her swings were slowed by the larger implement, the first hit she landed thanks to her polearm manifestations smashed through one of Mannequin’s smaller arms.

Seeing that the outranging wouldn’t work, he got in close, blades extending from his hands to slash and stab away at her armor in vain even as he remained inside Alicia’s effective swing radius.

Eventually, Alicia’s inexperience overturned even the instincts that she felt sure came from her power, and Mannequin slipped a blade between the plates over her stomach, drawing out a scream from her. He was quick to capitalize on this, by extending his massive arm to her head and firing off a shot that, while it shattered on the faceplate, still managed to get a shard through and into her eye, which increased the intensity of her scream.

Even if Mannequin’s face lacked expressiveness, his body spoke of a cruel glee in tearing down a new hero as he leaned closer, another blade extending from his last remaining arm as he hunched over the armored cape, turning his back on the van.

He never saw the Siberian, now resembling a pale green Amber clad in her signature longcoat, reaching for his back, until she tore his chest open. At that point, he was too late, and the inexorable projection’s claws were mere inches from his brain.

He died quickly.

* * *

The first thing Legend saw as he rose into the air was the glimmering form of Shatterbird.

Remaining mostly silent and in her blind spot, the world’s greatest Blaster tried to sweep the city (what was left of it, anyways) for Hatchet Face, but kept getting distracted by both repositioning to stay out of Shatterbird’s line of sight and the sunlight glimmering off her stained glass dress, albeit not distracted to miss the gargantuan form of Crawler in the streets below.

Legend’s inaction towards the flying Shaker came to an end when she started to dive, almost directly towards the heroes who were still planning.

With only a moment’s regret for the loss of the incredibly powerful ability, Legend fired a blast of light at Shatterbird’s head, neatly disintegrating it even through the diffraction caused by her headpiece.

“Shatterbird eliminated,” said the Triumvirate member, before he returned to his search. Another few minutes of a grid pattern showed Hatchet Face A couple of streets over from the building Crawler was currently trying to bash his way into.

Carefully lining up his shot, Legend released an impact laser, which slammed into Hatchet Face. Fortunately enough, the Brute wasn’t braced enough to resist the forces involved, and went flying.

Legend maintained the blast of his laser, adjusting the Trump’s trajectory as he flew through the air just to land on Crawler, pinned by the continuing blast of force.

With his other hand, Legend released another disintegration beam, punching through Crawler, and kept it sweeping back and forth until nothing was left of the second and third toughest members of the Slaughterhouse Nine but ash.

“Hatchet Face and Crawler eliminated.”

* * *

Immediately after Legend’s announcement, Amber chimed in on the comms as well. “Siberian stolen, and Mannequin’s been mangled.”

Mouse and Backhand looked at each other, then Mouse said “Methinks it’s time we picked up the pace a little bit.”

That said, she threw a paper airplane, then raised her right arm, other arm wrapped around Backhand’s shoulders. After a moment of waiting, they popped forward, airplane in Mouse’s upraised hand.

This time, however, the duo saw a reddish-orange glow from a side street, which another airplane-enabled jaunt revealed to be Burnscar, burning down a firehouse. Mouse swapped the paper airplane for one made of aluminum foil, then sent it flying in Burnscar’s direction.

“The irony, it burns,” deadpanned Backhand.

“I thought the puns were my territory!” Mouse pouted for a moment, then sighed. “Fine, that one was rather situationally appropriate.”

Mouse released Backhand, then leapt into a spinning kick that, midway through, she vanished and reappeared behind Burnscar, who vanished in a burst of flame and reemerged across the street, giggling.

“Oh, little mouse, little mouse, don’t you like fire?”

The cluster cape shook her head, rolling through the flame and landing on her feet. “Not so, kiddo! I tend to prefer a nice grilled cheese sandwich to keep me warm!”

The unhinged Blaster scoffed. “Silly mouse, there’s no cheese here!”

“That’s okay, I brought my own!” Mouse pulled a comically large wedge of cheese out a belt pouch that was wildly too small to contain said wedge of cheese.

“What? How-”

Burnscar’s confusion was not to be answered, since Mouse chose that moment to bean her right in the face with it. An instant later, Mouse had one hand wrapped around the cheese and one on Burnscar’s shoulder, and when she teleported the two of them to Backhand, the Striker swiftly put the Blaster to sleep.

“Aww, man!” pouted Mouse. “I didn’t even get to get into a teleporter fight!”

Backhand sighed, then clicked her com open. “Burnscar neutralized.”

* * *

“You’re going to die here,” said Jack Slash.

“Mebbe,” replied the sun-darkened native man, shotgun pointed at the deranged Blaster. “But I’m gonna kill you first. And even if I don’t, you’re still as fucked as a pile of used dildos.”

“Oh? And why is that?”

Legend circled far above the two as they talked, already building a charge in his right hand. “Jack Slash located, he’s engaged with a mundane.”

“Don’t engage yet, Jacob has a power that allows him enhanced intuition and manipulation of capes.” Amber’s voice was low.

Below, the native man jerked his thumb skyward. “You don’t see Legend up there?”

Jack sighed. “So, Shatterbird is dead, then. Still, there’s no reason I can’t just kill you here.”

“True. Then again-” both barrels of the shotgun roared. “There’s no reason I can’t kill you, either.”

Jack looked down at the torn mess that was his gut, saw that Bonesaw’s mesh had failed, then looked back up to his killer before dropping to his knees, cradling his entrails with suddenly shaky hands.

Unhurried, the native man ejected the two shells from the shotgun and loaded two more in, strolling over to the exsanguinating form of Jack Slash.

“This is for my daughter, you sonuva bitch.” The shotgun spoke twice, and Jacob, last of the Slaughterhouse Nine, the cause of Gold Morning, collapsed backwards, skull blasted open.

“Jack Slash eliminated.” Legend almost didn’t realize it was his voice that spoke.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” said Amber, grinning audibly, “We’ve just taken out the Slaughterhouse Nine.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, so, the reason they took out the Nine so well is because they had powers suited to countering the Nine’s. Shatterbird is limited in offense when compared to Legend, and neither Hatchet Face nor Crawler have significant ranged attacks. Bonesaw’s plagues don’t get through Amber’s field, and Backhand can knock her unconscious with a touch, and Mouse and Backhand could have used their marks to track and eventually down Burnscar if they hadn’t blitzed her so effectively. Winter’s power couldn’t propagate through Alicia’s armor (spoiler: it’s not just her power that can’t cross the armor), Siberian got stonewalled by Limelight’s power (which is what saved Hero’s life against her), and once Amber stole the Siberian from Manton, she could tear through even Mannequin’s defenses. As for Jacob… well, I just wanted to use that line, and figured a normal should be the one to take out Jack. (It’s Alicia’s father that did the deed, so…)
> 
> Next week’s chapter might just be a power explanation since my schedule for the week is looking kinda crammed, so…
> 
> Otherwise, read, review, enjoy, and have a nice day!


	9. Interlude 2: Powers and More

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A peek behind the curtain, as it were.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, yeah. This week got really busy, so I don’t have the time for a full-on chapter, but I can explain some of the stuff that’s going on behind the obvious.

Danny’s power: He triggered with QA. It’s inspired by Chessmaster from Constellations: he can animate a small number of miniatures from pen and paper role playing games into their actual versions as described by their game statistics. He can animate up to six at a time, but the more powerful ones he can animate less of. If he animated, say, Lolth, he couldn’t animate any more before deanimating her, and she’d be probably a bit weaker than the 4e stat block, without the discorporation. He’s got a secondary Thinker power that allows him to understand their capabilities, and also helps with coordination between groups.

Taylor’s power: A bud off of QA, it pinged off of Amber. She can make a copy of one cape she’s touched at a time that emulates their power, if incompletely. For example, if she emulated Danny, she couldn’t animate as many miniatures at a time. Right now, she only has Danny’s power, so she’s not super dangerous if she doesn’t have any miniatures around (hint hint).

Alicia/Starlight’s power: Zion’s version of the Coruscant Knave/Legend’s power. I wanted to figure out what a Shaker version of the Coruscant Knave would be, and I came up with what’s essentially Angela DeSoto’s power (from Super Powereds): she can turn ambient light into hardlight constructs. Because she was under attack from a power at the time, she got a Trump aspect too: Shard-based powers can’t get past the constructs she makes. It’s not perfect, since Shaker powers like Winter’s can squeeze through the gaps and a sufficiently strong Brute could translate impact force through the armor like the Siberian did, but mostly her power protects her from that kind of thing. There’s also a side of Thinker that lets her fight more effectively, but that wasn’t enough to close the skill gap between her and Mannequin, who’s learned to get around power armor in his Tinker-killing.

Mouse Protector: She second triggered at some point, giving her a couple new powers: she’s got clairvoyance within about three feet of objects she’s marked, plus she can teleport objects that she’s got marked as well. She’s Manton Limited, so she can’t go all telefrag, but she can teleport, say, Backhand’s costume onto her. The shard she’s got would be called Recall by Cauldron, or the Bookkeeper by Glaistig Uaine, and is more or less used as a memory storage system by Zion.

Backhand: She also second triggered, which basically gave her Camille Belden’s power (also Super Powereds): She functions as a healer by absorbing injuries from others, and can inflict her festering injuries with a touch now. Her shard would be called Injury by Cauldron, or Bloodied Echo by Glaistig Uaine, and Zion uses it to regenerate his avatar.

Shuhari (not in story yet): Bakuda had an alt-trigger. Instead of after messing up a test, she triggered after messing up a gymnastic routine. She’s got perfect awareness of everything within a certain radius of her, she’s in peak condition for a human, and she has a minor healing factor, enough to offset the wear and tear on her body that acrobatics brings. I gave her an alt-power because, in this world, Lung didn’t form the ABB after getting to Brockton Bay, he formed the Pan-Asian Collective. It’s a less morally bankrupt version of the ABB: no drug trade, no sex slavery, about the same amount of protection money, more Empire raids, more restrained, and basically devoted to fighting back the Empire and the Merchants. Lung’s more restrained, so he wouldn’t be willing to accept Bakuda in canon, plus the Empire is actually stronger than in canon, so… there’s gonna be more PAC capes than just Oni Lee, Lung, and Shuhari, I just haven’t decided on their powers. She’s still kind of an egoist, but she understands her limits.

Allfather: He can create portals within his line of sight that he summons relatively simple metal constructs through. He’s capable of using these portal as a pseudo-Mover rating, since he can open multiple portals at a time and move through them either before or after summoning his constructs. Semi-retired, now: he doesn’t really fight after he lost his leg in a fight with Lung, but he still runs transport for the Empire and helps out with planning/intel/logistics. He’s one of the big reasons the Empire is so much more powerful: he’s the best Mover in Brockton Bay, at least for now.

Iron Rain: She can create metal constructs in midair and grant them velocity. They disintegrate unless she specifically makes them last, but she can still make armor a la Kaiser and fly around using the velocity granting. She can’t make as much as Kaiser, but she’s less range limited. Doesn’t go out much, but synergizes well with Rune, who she works with a lot.

Amber: I’m not giving everything away right now, but she didn’t actually use Conflux’s power to steal the Siberian. She thinks that, but… well, the way it actually happened was that she shut down Manton’s connection with his Shard while keeping him alive using a dimension-related power that’s basically Firefight’s from the Reckoners, and emulated his power, returning the Shard to Eden. As for why Limelight’s power can no-sell the Siberian… Well, basically, his force fields are inviolate, with the exception of his own disintegration power. They can be bypassed, but they’re not the kind of field you can just punch through. Citation: he’s blocked in a thermal bloom strong enough to cook off New York City with no appreciable strain.

Capo: A replacement for Coil, since Calvert is actually loyal to the PRT thanks to Amber’s actions in Ellisburg. His power is essentially save scumming: it’s the same vial that Calvert got, but instead of being essentially Schrödinger’s cat (which is actually Calvert’s power in this world because I said so), he can create a save point, which he can reset to at any point. It doesn’t work as well in close proximity to more powerful capes like Danny (because QA is a noble shard and he’s got a strong expression of it), which makes the “load” time longer, he does get Thinker headaches from overusing it, and he doesn’t have any better a memory than a normal person. The actual mechanics is something along the lines of copying off his consciousness and sending it sideways into another universe. He didn’t bother scooping up Tattletale since the PRT’s already got their eyes on her and he knows it from having some of the police officers he’d had scoping her out be dissuaded by Calvert’s men, but he has the rest of the Undersiders, and more contacts on the police side than Coil, but fewer in the PRT.

Endbringers: Khonsu showed up instead of Ziz. He still destroyed Lausanne and London, but he did it by driving people insane via Gray Boy-style torture loops. He also aged Alan Gramme’s family to death right in front of him, creating Mannequin, and he also attacked Madison, bringing the Travelers over. They’re not Ziz bombs, but Noelle and Oliver still made the mistake of splitting a Vial. End result: Switzerland is still more or less destroyed, but the Ziz bombs aren’t a thing, and he goes more for short term destruction than long term intricate plots.

Siberian: The injuries that the Siberian inflicted resist parahuman healing because she leaves residue behind. Eidolon managed to salvage most of Rebecca’s face, but her eye and Hero’s leg were a write-off because the residue is actively resisting healing, to the point where Hero’s prosthetic isn’t actually a prosthetic, strictly speaking: it’s a hard-light emitter that just happens to mostly emit in a leg shape, and that he just happens to have on his leg most of the time, by coincidence, otherwise the Siberian’s residue would prevent it from working. Now that the Siberian is, strictly speaking, not a factor anymore, a sufficiently strong healer could heal Hero’s leg. Alexandria would require an even stronger healer because she’s time-locked, but it is theoretically possible to give her her eye back. Backhand isn’t a strong enough healer, but there are healers strong enough for this. Panacea could probably heal Hero, if she had the biomass, and Eidolon, after Eden recharged him, might have a power that would heal Alexandria now that the Siberian isn’t interfering, or Amber could lend Alexandria Limelight’s regeneration, although I’m not sure how that’d mesh with her being timelocked.

PRT: After the “discovery” of Alexandria’s Thinker powers as Director Costa-Brown, they reorganized to allow parahumans with less combat-oriented powers to be members of the PRT, but not in a Directorship role. As such, Tom Calvert (still a Cauldron Cape with the timeline power) and Captain Stranger (a natural trigger with a Thinker power that allows him better analysis of materials, which lets him make better body armor and maintain simple Tinkertech) are PRT officials who work with Piggot, who’s not anti-cape rabid thanks to, once again, Amber’s actions at Ellisburg. She got her canon injuries in a Shatterbird attack, and she’s very much anti-villain, but she’s more willing to trust capes as a whole. She doesn’t like Assault because of his time as Madcap, but she’s willing to work with him, and she trusted the Wards to Armsmaster, which was probably a mistake since he was more focused on Tinkering than watching them. She also doesn’t trust the Cauldron capes she’s interacted with because they’re too well-adjusted, with the exception of Calvert (Calvert came out of Ellisburg, which was worth a Trigger event, and in fact is where Stranger had his- the trip wire was his first Thinker thing) and Gallant (what she knows about his home life fits a trigger for a Thinker/Master power like what he has).

* * *

“And it’s go, boys, go, they’ll time your every breath!” Alicia, strolling in the dusk by the light of her armor, looked up and saw Amber sitting on top of a building, feet dangling from the edge of the roof.

“And every day you’re in this place, you’re two days nearer death! But you go…” Amber’s voice faded to nothing as Alicia climbed a series of hardlight platforms.

“Hey, Starlight. How goes it?” The more experienced cape sounded tired in a way that belied her actions earlier in the day.

“It’s… going, I guess.” Alicia rubbed at the scar around her eye, freshly regrown by the more experienced cape’s regeneration after Mannequin’s shot had managed to get through the gaps in her helmet.

Amber nodded. “Yeah, I get that. Want to talk about it?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“There’s always a choice.” A gleam of adamant will shone in Amber’s eyes. “But, in this case, I would suggest talking to someone.”

Alicia sighed, then sat down. “”I… I don’t even know where to start.”

“Well… me neither.” Amber stared out into the distance for a moment. “I’m gonna tell you something I told a friend of mine years ago: adulting is about 95% improv and 5% stuff you already get. That definitely applies to being a hero.”

“Yeah, but…” Alicia gestured out at the glass-covered streets. “Everything’s gone to shit. I’m going to have to leave everything behind!”

“Me too.” When Alicia blinked, Amber explained. “I… well, it’s complicated, but I ended up leaving everything behind when I Triggered, and kinda also after…” Amber closed her eyes and ground out “Ellisburg.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I-”

“Nah, don’t worry about it,” said Amber, eyes opening. “Nilbog’s not gonna ruin my  _ pinché _ life. Don’t let the Nine ruin yours.”

“N-no, I won’t.”

Amber nodded, then patted the shorter hero on the head. “Keep on going, kiddo.”

“I-I’m not a kid, I’m nineteen!”

“Whatever you say, kiddo,” said the twenty-year-old hero, grinning. “Don’t stay out here too long.” They jumped off the roof, landing neatly in the green-hued arms of the duplicate that was once called the Siberian, then dropped to her feet and walked off, leaving Alicia with her thoughts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I felt bad not actually having story content, so I wrote in one more snip at the end. Next week, I think, will be another interlude to see the aftershocks of the deaths of the Nine.
> 
> That’s it, so read, review, enjoy, and have a nice day!


	10. Interlude 3: Eidolon, Hannah, Capo, and Taylor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A pivot chapter, where Brockton Bay snaps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My marching band is showing, I think.
> 
> This week has been,,, not fun. Fortunately it’s more or less been dealt with, and I don’t think I’ll have this perfect storm of “fuck your free time” anytime soon.
> 
> On a separate note, I’m considering writing a CYOA-based fic after this, something inspired (hehe) by A Ghost of a Chance in at least the initial kit. I’ve got a couple other ideas bouncing around, but that might end up starting before I finish this fic because my muse intermittently has the attention span of a hypercaffeinated kitten surrounded by laser pointers, in which case I’d go to an “every other week” schedule for this fic interspersed with that one.

_ The day after the death of the Slaughterhouse Nine _

Eidolon was ostensibly watching as Eden made contact with Scion, because he had access to Thinker powers that didn’t freeze up when looking at an Entity and at least some ability to respond on a reasonable scale if the proverbial shit hit the fan, but in actuality he was thinking about the massive changes that came about as a result of Amber’s… interference wasn’t the word for it, but it was close enough.

The massive shift to Cauldron’s operations as a result of just her power would have been enough- the pressure off of him as the only cape who could stand up to Scion helped (even if a traitorous voice in the back of his head was screaming about his wounded pride).

But that wasn’t the only thing she brought to the table.

An Entity on their side against Scion, even if they had been given the third degree after Eden had heard what, exactly, they had been doing with the vials, was cause for celebration. The fact that she retained enough connection to the capes that had been empowered from her flesh to be able to deal with the drawbacks caused by their being forced to resort to trial and error for said vials only helped, and he wasn’t exactly opposed to her dealing with the issue of his power returning to its height.

The knowledge of how, exactly, things would have played out, as well as the reveal of Taylor Hebert as a Trump nearly on his level after Kurt had been able to look into her power were both also direct results of their actions.

But the fact that they had taken out the Slaughterhouse Nine with only five capes and minimal prep time, one of whom was a fresh trigger able to no-sell the Siberian’s insane offense in a way that only Amber’s force fields had been able to thus far?

Taken all together, and to say that Eidolon was gobsmacked was, if anything, putting it mildly. Only the reveal (courtesy of Eden) of her subconscious… well, he thought of it as a Shaker/Thinker power, but its ability to optimize situations was critical for all of her efforts coming out as something remotely approaching decent, let alone so incredibly well.

That wasn’t to say that he wasn’t cognizant of the issues that might arise as a result of her psych profile, of course.

According to Kurt (who, fortunately, could leverage his power towards psychology just as well as he could to combat), Amber was still dealing with the trauma that was Ellisburg. And by “dealing”, he meant that she was throwing herself into her work, as evidenced by said rout of the Slaughterhouse Nine.

This report was corroborated by the impressions that Mouse Protector and Backhand had of her (that is, still traumatized by Ellisburg, and to a lesser extent, her being torn away from her universe and dumped into, as she described it, the Australia of universes. Eidolon privately found himself agreeing about this assessment of Earth Bet, not that he would tell anyone).

This was at least partially related to their (functionally boundless) power, which given the pressure that they subjected themself to brought about some comparisons with him that Eidolon preferred not to think about.

He idly noted Scion wrapping Eden in a hug, but returned to his contemplation after his emulated Entity communication power returned no aggression.

But… well, Legend had said he had made headway with convincing Amber to get therapy for her issues, and if push came to shove they could ask Eden to talk the nascent Entity around to talking to Yamada with Path to Victory. Eidolon should at least continue following suit, given what Amber had revealed about his power, but… well, that was an issue for another time, one for when Eden wasn’t talking Scion out of being the harbinger of Ragnarök.

He breathed in, then out, and returned his attention to the pair. Until then, he had a job to do.

* * *

_ Six days after the death of the Slaughterhouse Nine _

Hannah sighed, lowering herself gingerly into the chair. While Amber’s gifted regeneration helped with the bruises and other small injuries that sparring with her brought (even when limiting herself just to her favored Shaker power, she was still a massive threat), it did nothing to the psychosomatic exhaustion brought around by the type of exercise that sparring with her brought. She was just glad she wasn’t on Hookwolf’s prisoner transport duty, although that was more a function of being on duty overnight.

Across the table from the Kurdish woman, Amber all but flopped into her chair. “Thanks for agreeing to spar, Hannah. I really needed to do something.”

Hannah nodded. “Trust me, I understand how that is.”

Amber laughed. “I suppose you would, what with being a Noctis cape.” The Trump paused, as if considering asking something.

“What is it?”

They sighed, then shrugged. “Might as well. Do you remember the… the vision you had? When you triggered?”

Hannah froze for a moment, then forced her power to stop cycling. “Yes. Did you-”

Amber waggled her head. “Yes and no… It’s complicated, but for all intents and purposes… Fuck. Right. Hannah, you have to keep this quiet, okay? It’s not… that dangerous, not anymore, but it’s not something we want to get out yet, okay?”

Hannah looked directly into Amber’s eyes for a moment, assessing, then nodded. “If you ask me to, and if it’s not hurting anyone, I’ll keep it quiet.”

“Alright.” Amber took in a deep breath, then breathed out tiredly. “Alright. It’s the thing that’s projecting Zion, and the source of powers.”

“What.” Hannah blinked repeatedly, gobsmacked.

Amber nodded. “Like I said. Complicated.”

Hannah sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “You don’t say.”

“In my defense,” said Amber, “I’m not the one who decided to keep this hidden. It’s been going on since before my time. I just… Well, I came back just in time to watch it get declassified.”

“No, no, I don’t blame you, it’s just…” Hannah trailed off, having had a thought. “Wait. Declassified. Does that mean-”

“The original Protectorate know. They’ve got… an independent organization that’s been doing research on the phenomenon,” said Amber, who (as Hannah would say with the benefits of hindsight and an eventual public reveal of Cauldron) was massively underselling things. “He’s essentially a magic space whale-god-thing that’s been going around the universe, trying to get around entropy.”

“That’s… hard to believe.”

Amber laughed, a harsh, bitter sound. “Yeah, yeah. I get that. It’s… spectacularly bullshit, from a logic standpoint, but if the universe were logical we wouldn’t have the human body set up so that, to put it in civil engineering terms, we have a sewage pipeline run through a recreational area.”

“Recreational- Ha!” Hannah laughed as she translated the terms into their equivalents in the human body. “Where’d you hear that one?”

Amber eyed her shrewdly, but ultimately went along with her redirection. “Back home. I don’t remember where I read that, exactly, but it was the type of thing that-” they bit their sentence off. “Never mind.”

Ah, right. Amber was one of the few Protectorate capes like her, in that their history had cut them off from their family and home before triggering.

“Sorry.”

Amber shook her head, chuckling ruefully. “Not your fault. Touchier subject than I expected, combined with literally all the things. Good news is, Hero and Mouse finally convinced me to go to therapy, so it’ll hopefully become just another thing.”

Hannah nodded. “Good. I’m glad you’re finally feeling ready to take this next step, and-”

Danny exploded through the door, eyes wide and frantic. “Taylor’s gone.”

Hannah paled. Besides being Danny’s daughter, she was an extremely powerful Trump, with the ability to create a projection of one cape she’d touched (as determined by power testing focused around Amber’s analysis over the past few days). She didn’t have many powers available at the moment, those being Danny (who required miniatures to use his power), Armsmaster, Thomas Calvert, Tom Stranger, and Kid Win, so it was relatively easy to keep her confined, since the projection’s range was limited to about fifteen feet from her and further constrained by line of sight, so there was no way for her to manage combat without external tools, even if she did have echoes of their skills available.

“Mother fuck of a shit.” Amber shot to their feet. “I knew I should have picked up that fucking Dowser ability.”

She snapped her fingers, and the ghostly green duplicate of her that was her version of the Siberian (and wasn’t that odd to think about?) appeared. “I’ll send out my projection to help look around, but I’m staying here on the Rig so I can put together a clair… hang on. Door to Taylor Hebert.”

Hannah blinked at Amber when nothing happened. “What was that supposed to be?”

“Friendly Mover, stationary portals. Functionally unlimited range. Dammit, that was the fastest solution. Okay. Right. I’ll… Siberian searching, me here and putting together something that could help me track her. Danny, if you’ve got any fliers available, send ‘em out.” Said projection rose into the air, then flew out the door.

Hannah stood. “I’ll go get Velocity off the console so he can help.”

Danny stood still, eyes lost in the distance, before Amber clapped their hands in front of his face. “Dammit, Danny, get your head in the game! The sooner we get working, the sooner we get Taylor back.”

“failed…”

“The only one who failed,” snapped Amber, already falling into the deadly relaxed state that Hannah had seen so many times before a fight, “was the dumb motherfucker who decided that she was an acceptable kidnap target, and that is likely to be the biggest of their life.” She looked up at Hannah. “Go relieve Velocity. I’ve got this.”

When the Blaster arrived at the console, it was to a grimly determined Velocity.

“The Empire is springing Hookwolf. They’re actually fielding Allfather, Iron Rain, and Rune all at once.”

Just as Hannah opened her mouth to respond, a voice came from the console. “Dispatch, Assault.”

“Go, Assault,” said Velocity.

“Krieg, Cricket, Stormtiger, and Victor are engaging Shuhari and Oni Lee in the middle of the Docks.”

Velocity made eye contact with Hannah, who shook her head, then responded. “Hold position, for now. Krieg’s power isn’t great for either you or Battery, but we’ll try and route Heavyweight and Dauntless from their patrol to help if you can keep track of them.”

“Bad news, Console,” drawled Heavyweight. We’ve got Kaiser, the twins, and Othala facing off against Lung, and Yokai is fighting Crusader.”

“We’ve got Skidmark and Squealer driving down the street, too,” said Dauntless, followed immediately by the sound of a high-velocity something bouncing off his shield. “We’re engaging them while we can.”

“Well, shit.” Somehow, Hannah couldn’t find it in herself to dispute Assault’s sentiment, since this big an assault meant that only a few minor capes, like the PAC’s Bushido (a minor Brute with enhanced balance and accuracy, which he made use of with a massive recurve bow firing Toybox-sourced trick arrows) as well as their limited non-cape forces, and whatever members of New Wave weren’t busy, to fight off the street-level Empire members, not to mention other villains in the city like Capo, the Undersiders, or Circus, since both Mouse Protector and Backhand were out of the city to help guard the Madison portal to Aleph thanks to an outbreak of food poisoning.

Some days, it didn’t pay to be a hero.

* * *

Capo grinned under his faceless mask, very much satisfied with how his strategic leaks had stirred up the city. Thanks to his contacts with the police, he’d been able to to figure out the route that Hookwolf’s transport was taking thanks to road closures, which he’d leaked to the Empire. Luckily enough, his transport was only being guarded by Armsmaster and Triumph, since they were relying on secrecy over raw power to protect them, so the combination of the Empire’s best offensive Movers overwhelmed the mostly-melee capes and token handful of PRT troops handily.

The Empire had also easily been maneuvered into sending out their other capes to make a statement, as it were, tying up the rest of the Protectorate and PAC capes, leaving their nonpowered members to wreak havoc all but unopposed. The absence of Backhand and her partner was fortuitous as well, but there were more than enough capes in the mix to tie them up too, had they been there. 

The chaos these events created allowed him to grab his two new capes. He’d had to use more than a few resets to get Shadow Stalker to bring in her old victim alive and unharmed enough to get his plans rolling soon, but Regent was more than capable of bringing in the Thinker on his own. Say what you will about Heartbreaker, but his particular… management style created extremely pliable subordinates. It was too bad he hadn’t been able to poach more of the man’s children, but ultimately the only cape he could rely on was himself, and those he either had broken himself or held direct leverage over.

While at the moment that was only Grue through his sister and Hellhound through her dogs, soon he’d have a Thinker and an incredibly powerful Trump, and then he could work on securing his hold over Shadow Stalker and Regent.

While at this point keeping Shadow Stalker hidden seemed to be more trouble than it was work, he was confident that he’d be able to insert her into the Undersiders soon enough. She’d already paid dividends off the minor manipulations it took to make sure she wasn’t adequately contained by the arresting officers, and this would push that even farther. After all, she only needed to break once, and he had as many tries as he needed.

Noticing that Miss Hebert was finally waking up, he finished the email he was preparing to acquire the services of the Travelers from Accord (and also thanking him for allowing him to use Citrine to set up an area that protected him from Thinkers, it helped him cut ties safely with the disgustingly selfless Cauldron), adjusted his finely tailored suit, and opened the microphone that connected to the room where he was keeping his two newest acquisitions.

“Hello there…”

* * *

Taylor blinked her gummy eyes open, then reached up to rub at her eyes, closing them again, but stopped when something held her wrist down. What hap-

_ Shadow Stalker. _

Somehow, Sophia’d gotten into the hospital the day before she was due to be released (even with Stitch in Time’s healing, they needed to keep an eye on her in case of some complication came up), held her down, and jabbed Taylor with something that made her go unconscious before she could use her projection for anything.

“Oh, good. You’re awake.”

Taylor’s eyes shot open and she sat bolt upright, seeing the blank concrete of the room, the strap holding her arm to the bed, and the blonde curled up in the opposite corner.

“Hi. I’m… I’m Lisa.” She waved the hand that wasn’t toying with a similar binding to Taylor’s.

“Taylor.”

A speaker high on the wall (good materials out of her reach, said the echo of Armsmaster in her head) crackled to life. “Hello there, young ladies. Sleep well?”

“I must say,” replied Lisa, smirking, “the accommodations could use a little work. What does a girl have to do to get some room service?”

“I’m afraid,” came the smooth voice, “that there’s not much point in getting your hopes up. The two of you will be working with me from now on.”

“And if we don’t want to?” asked Taylor, pulling up her shade of Mr. Stranger.

“In that case, I hope you’re not too attached to your father.”

“You say that, but I’m not seeing any reason for me not to just jump ship,” said Lisa while Taylor was borrowing Stranger’s mindset to work through the implications. He probably didn’t know that her father was GameMaster, otherwise he’d have been less cavalier about that threat…

“In that case, miss Livsey, I will have no choice but to bring in your parents. They would be very… grateful, I think, to me for returning their wayward daughter.”

Lisa clenched her fists and her mouth compressed down to a single line, but she said nothing.

“In that case, I believe I’ll let you two get to know each other. You will be working together soon enough, and you will need to accept that.” The speaker cut out with a crackle of static.

Lisa looked at Taylor. “Well, great. Capo’s got some kind of diversion going on, something to hide us going missing.”

Taylor shook her head, peeling the strap on her arm back. “Dad’s coming for me.”

“You… well, shit. He really stuck his dick in the beehive, didn’t he.” Lisa winced, eyes unfocused, then shook her head. “Look, I wouldn’t put it past him to have some kind of countermeasure for the Protectorate.”

“Trust me,” said Taylor, grinning, “There’s no countering Stitch in Time.” She gestured the projection of Stranger over closer to them. “Now come on, let’s see if two Thinkers can’t figure out a way out before we get rescued.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one came out longer than I expected, oops.
> 
> I’ve been keeping Stranger’s power under wraps more or less for this, but some of you might have figured it out already.
> 
> The next few chapters will probably be split between Taylor’s perspective and Amber’s perspective, because I want to have the progression of both the E88 war and the interactions of Taylor with Lisa progress at the same time, and we’ll probably get Stranger’s actual power in that.
> 
> I’m trying new and proposing a discussion question for the comments/thread, we’ll see how it goes.
> 
> This week’s question is “Does August Prince’s power count as an All or Nothing power?”
> 
> That’s it, so read, review, and have a nice day!


	11. The Vice Closes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> See? You don’t need Bakuda to set off a gang war!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Racial slurs ahead! We have a Hispanic character fighting members of the Empire, so…
> 
> As a couple of people have mentioned, Capo is Very Arrogant. This is deliberate- as far as he knows, he has an unlimited number of tries to do anything, so he’s gone beyond confidence into “eventually I will succeed at something, no matter what it is”. (oh, how wrong he is)

“Well, that’s just peachy.” Amber sighed, then shook her head, pushing aside the notes she was taking about the ways she was trying to dowse for powers. “Dammit, this has ‘Mastermind Plot’ written all over it. The Empire knowing where and when to spring Hookwolf, the attack from the rest of their capes, the kidnap… Fuckin’ arc 3 all over again, except without...”

_ Tattletale! _

“What?” asked Hannah.

“Potential complication. I remember in the briefing I got on the state of the city Calvert mentioned wanting to recruit an unaffiliated Thinker? Going by Lisa Wilbourn, or something along those lines?”

“Do you think she might be involved in all this?”

Amber frowned, then shook her head. “Not as a mastermind, but yeah, in the same way as Taylor. Kidnap and subvert.”

“Are you sure?”

“Not… sure, exactly, but I’ve got a reasonable suspicion.” Coil and Capo have similar public setups, so it wasn’t too far-fetched to assume they’ve got similar undercover attitudes. “He strikes me as the kind of  _ cabrón _ to pull the whole ‘ _ plata o plomo _ ’ stunt.”

“I… can’t say I’ve heard that particular expression before.”

“Ah, right. Well, it’s a Colombian thing. Literally, silver or lead. More metaphorically, it means that you either work for someone, or you catch a bad case of high-velocity lead poisoning, if you catch my drift.”

Hannah blinked owlishly at Amber. “You have an oddly euphemistic way of speaking.”

The Trump shrugged. “You can take the student out of the English major, but you can’t take the English Major out of the student. Besides, some of these sayings are just fun.”

A beat later, Amber reached over and tapped a button on the console. “Assault, Battery, I’ve got a projection inbound. I’ll be doing my level best to drop Krieg first, so you guys might want to prepare for me to jump in.”

Across the bay from the Rig, the green-glowing form of Amber’s projection leapt up onto the building and crept up on Assault and Battery.

“Understood, Console. ETA?”

“I’m already here,” said Amber through her projection.

Battery jolted around, fists rising, as Assault leapt into a spin that brought him down neatly a foot and a half in front of them. “Damn, Stitch. Nice one.”

“Thanks, Assault,” replied Amber. “Be right back.” They lunged off the roof, flaring Legacy’s power to guide their trajectory, and slammed into Krieg, his kinetic control having minimal impact on the selectively-massed projection. A moment’s use of Sourcefield’s electric blasts left the Shaker unconscious, and they dragged him back to the roof to be cuffed as Oni Lee pushed hard and overwhelmed Stormtiger.

“Special delivery,” said the projection.

Assault blinked. “Wow, that was fast.”

“Eh…” Amber’s projection shrugged. “The powers I’m running right now pretty well counter Krieg, but I don’t have anything to hold Cricket like Shuhari or Victor like Oni Lee.” The former matchup was equalized by Shuhari’s localized awareness of everything around her and minor healing factor, and the latter by the fact that, thanks to the mechanics of the PAC cape’s cloning, Victor couldn’t drain the Mover properly before the clone faded.

Amber turned their head to Militia. “Krieg’s been taken down, Assault and Battery are managing the restraints. Next priority: Lung’s fight, Squealer’s tank, or the convoy?”

“Console, Armsmaster. They’ve gotten Hookwolf away.” Amber practically heard him grinding his teeth at that.

“Roger that, Armsmaster. Take Triumph and go cut off Squealer.” Miss Militia turned to Amber. “Lung’s fight.”

“Got it.” Amber focused back on Assault and Battery. “You guys okay if I cut and run to put the hurt on Kaiser?”

“Careful, there. Wouldn’t want to steal all the glory from us little people, would you?”

Battery swatted Assault on the shoulder. “We should be fine.”

“Alright. I’m off!” Amber’s projection leapt from the roof, then flew off, guided by their body looking at the map on the console.

The two minutes it took her to fly to the fight were frustratingly long.

Amber took a moment to assess the situation: Lung was standing in the middle of a thicket of Kaiser’s blades, melting them almost as quickly as the Empire’s combat leader could summon them and growing slowly, while Fenja and Menja took turns standing over Othala and harrying Lung. Off to the side, Crusader’s ghost-knight-things and Yokai’s summoned spirits (far less uniform than her opponent’s minions) crashed against one another in a wave of popping projections and the lightshow that Yokai’s spirits put off when dissipating.

Amber waited for one of the giantess twins left Othala, then lunged forward, arms extended, and clotheslined the Empire’s pet Trump, then ran electricity through her to subdue her. This done, Amber retreated to Heavyweight’s position on a nearby roof and left her at his feet. “You got her?”

He nodded. “Knock ‘em dead, kiddo.”

“Will do.” Amber dropped back to street level, this time with the boom of a heavy object impacting asphalt.

“Kaiser.”

The Shaker turned, already sweeping his hand across to impale whoever it was that dared to interrupt him.

The blades broke on the impervious skin of the Siberian-form of Amber.

“Thanks for wrapping yourself in steel, that’ll help.” Amber punched forward, not managing to do more than dent his armor before she flicked on Sourcefield’s powers and electrocuting him, too.

Kaiser dropped, spasming a bit, and Amber flipped him onto his back with her foot.

Back on the Rig, Amber grinned at Miss Militia. “Kaiser down, Othala captu-”

Menja swept her spear through Amber’s projection, shattering the implement but successfully drawing their attention and throwing them forward a few feet before they managed to regain their feet..

Amber blinked. “Did- did you forget that I am the force field Cape here? How did you think that was going to work for you?”

Menja’s lip curled up into a sneer. “I don’t have to explain myself to a spic bitch like you.”

Amber shrugged. “Suit yourself.” She clenched her fist and dragged it down, forcing gravity to yank the titanic Breaker down towards her, then snapped said fist out, breaking the blonde’s nose and snapping her head back, even through her space-warping defense.

Menja staggered back, one hand moving up to her face on reflex, then spat a glob of blood that shrank as it got further than about a foot from her, but was still large enough to splatter across Amber’s face and obscure their vision before they blasted it off with electricity.

“Fuck you too, then,” snarled Amber, lunging forward into a leg sweep that left the Breaker sprawling sideways in the street.

Menja planted her hand on a parked car, then shrunk down to human size for a moment and then reexpanding, allowing herself to push herself upright far more rapidly than if she’d tried to do it while in Amber’s short range.

She looked up at a roof behind Amber, then grinned, showing bloody teeth, and-

“Dammit!” shouted Heavyweight, and Amber turned to see him wielding a length of rebar to fend off Fenja, which was getting slowly shaved down by Fenja’s sword. Amber lunged forward, but then Kaiser summoned a blade that slammed Heavyweight backwards, allowing Fenja to scoop up the bound form of Othala and, with Kaiser and Crusader both in a blade-throne grown from the surface of her shield, ran away in a blur of Othala-granted superspeed.

Amber spun back to Menja only to see her vanishing into the distance as well, then sighed. Returning her attention to Miss Militia on the Rig, she sighed dejectedly. “They got away.”

* * *

Lisa and Taylor both sat on the floor, with the projection of Jim Stranger forming the third corner of an equilateral triangle with the duo.

“I still can’t believe that the PRT has a dual-focus thinker on the level of this guy,” grumped Lisa quietly.

“To be fair,” came the voice of the projection, “both Taylor and Stranger pinged to some degree off of Stitch in Time. My original got tactical thinker on top of materials analysis, but Taylor got the Trump emulation aspect of her power.”

“Some people,” grumbled Lisa good-naturedly, “just win all of the superpower lotteries.”

“Anyways,” said Taylor, forcibly dragging the conversation back on track, “we’ve only got a limited amount of information that we could get from using Shadow Stalker’s power. We have the guard rotation for the corridor outside, and the layout of nearby rooms, but not much more than that.” Taylor carefully ignored the anger of her imprint of Shadow Stalker.

“I’m still working around my power’s limitations to get a handle on things so we can get an escape attempt planned, but I have at least the building plan of this level, and-” Lisa froze, listening, then shook her head. “Dispel the projection, someone’s coming.”

Not a moment after the green-glowing shade of the PRT official vanished, the door clacked open, revealing a man in a puffy shirt with a scepter and a venetian-style mask, Shadow Stalker, and a man in a well-tailored suit with a blank-faced mask. The face-masked Breaker pointed a crossbow at Taylor, but neither of the others had visible weapons, to Taylor’s reckoning.

“Come along,” said the blank-masked man. “You’re being moved.”

Lisa moved jerkily to her feet, casting a hateful glare towards the puffy-shirted man, and Taylor followed, brushing against him on her way out.

The blank-faced man (who Taylor thought was probably Capo, but she wasn’t sure) led the way, which terminated in a larger room after five silent minutes of walking through vaguely yellow-tinted passageways.

Inside the room were three other people: one of them was a diminutive brunette with more freckles than Lisa; another was a dark skinned teenager with high cheekbones who reappeared instants after the door opened, purple-streaked hair, and a figure that Taylor would deny causing her jealousy; and a redhead with twisted legs.

“To those of you who will survive the next five minutes, this is the price of failure and betrayal.”

Probably-Capo raised a compact gun to point at the redhead, then squeezed the trigger. The report of the firearm echoed deafeningly within the small, concrete-walled room, and the redhead slumped over, blood running from the entry wound in her eye socket. After a moment, a mercenary in tactical gear came in and dragged the body away, leaving the bloodstain behind.

“Fail me, and die. Betray me, and die. I will know if you’re planning betrayal, and will make you regret it.” His hand clenched, then released, and his next breath was marginally harder. “You have been warned.”

He turned and stalked out of the room. The puffy-shirted man followed immediately, and Lisa relaxed, but Shadow Stalker lunged forward and pressed Taylor to a wall. “Fuck up, and you’re mine, Hebert. Understand?”

“Now kiss!” shouted the dark-skinned girl, grinning.

Shadow Stalker wheeled on her, then lashed out with a punch that sent the girl falling onto her backside. “Shut the fuck up, bitch.”

She swept out of the room, cloak billowing, and slammed the door.

Lisa chuckled, then snapped her fingers, grinning smugly, and pointed at the girl with the pink-streaked hair. “Leverage.” She pointed to the brunette. “Thinker slave.” She pointed to herself. “Also Thinker slave.” She pointed to Taylor. “Undersiders member.” She pointed to the bloodstain. “Not an actual person.”

Taylor’s imprint of Stranger nudged her. “A throwaway example?”

Lisa’s grin intensified. “Exactly.”

“So, introductions. I’m Aisha, and she-” Aisha pointed at the other person. “-is Dinah. She’s a Thinker of some sort, and my brother’s one of his employees. I’m his leverage.”

“Lisa. I’m also a Thinker, and I think I’m supposed to be working with your brother on a team, along with her.” She jerked her thumb at Taylor.

Taylor wilted a little, but soldiered on. “Taylor. I can make a projection of one cape at a time.”

“What Taylor’s neglected to mention,” said Lisa, dragging her over to the center of the room, “is that her father is…” She looked at Taylor, who nodded. “...is GameMaster. She’s also working with Stitch in Time, who’s working with her to get a handle on her power, who’s… well, she’s got some kind of rapport with Taylor.”

“Odds that we’ll get rescued by the Protectorate if we time our breakout for three days from now,” said Dinah from the corner, her voice wavering. “97.3307%.”

“Wait, that’s not how probability works…” Taylor trailed off.

Aisha grinned. “Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s get planning.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This week was unfortunately also ridiculous. I can’t promise a chapter next week, since the extra work I’ve got on my plate isn’t over yet.
> 
> I think that’s it for this week, so read, review, enjoy, and have a nice day.


	12. Rising Action

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The roller coaster’s making its way up the hill…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I survived this week!

_ Two days after Hookwolf’s escape _

Amber pinched the bridge of her nose. “So you mean to tell me that you don’t know who signed miss Hebert out of the hospital? The patient who was still under official police guard?”

The hospital orderly blanched. “N-no, ma’am, they didn’t tell us.”

“Well, ain’t that just peachy,” sighed Amber. They rubbed their face, then sighed. “Well, does anyone know who the officers in charge were so I can give them the third degree about their mistake?”

“Ma’am,” said one of the nurses off to the side after a silent, tense moment, swallowing visibly, “I believe we have their badge numbers available in the records room, if you’ll follow me?”

Amber nodded. “Lead on, MacDuff.”

The man started walking. “You know, that’s a misquote,” he said, hand tapping at his leg nervously. At Amber’s raised eyebrow, he continued: “The original line’s ‘Lay on, MacDuff’, actually.”

“I mean, yeah, but also that line’s more ‘let’s fight to the death’ than ‘let’s go’ like this situation calls for.” Amber shrugged. “Also at this point it’s in the cultural zeitgeist as ‘lead on, MacDuff’ so popular consensus marks it acceptable.”

The nurse blinked repeatedly, gobsmacked, then opened a door. “In here, miss. Just a moment…”

Amber entered, and felt all the hairs on her neck stand up. The room was indeed a records room, but she felt like something was waiting to happen.

Amber turned around just in time to watch the door click shut.

“Hands up,” said a voice behind them.

Amber relaxed fractionally, turning to see a well-armed man in combat fatigues pointing a rifle at her. “You’re making a mistake,” she said, already preparing to lunge forward.

“The mistake,” said the man, “was you digging into Capo’s affairs.”

“The mistake,” snapped Amber, “was kidnapping a cape in negotiations with the PRT to join the wards whose father is a Protectorate cape, then accosting the Protectorate cape who came to investigate.”

The man blanched.

“Now then,” said Amber, cracking their knuckles. “You’re gonna tell me what you know about the kidnapping of Taylor Hebert.”

And he did.

* * *

Once the mercenary had been handled over to the police (since she didn’t have a mask, she covered herself in a visible layer of Limelight’s force field), Amber teleported back to the Rig, where she had been using her projection to explain what she’d gotten from the mercenary to the Protectorate members.

While Kurt, Hannah, and Triumph were relatively calm, Danny was fuming, about half a second away from insisting that they go to get Taylor then and there, when Amber clapped her hands, dissipating the projection and getting everyone’s attention before dropping into a chair.

“Alright, we need to put together a plan of attack. We should have Mouse and Backhand back from Madison now, so let’s go ahead and hunt down a conference room.”

“But-”

“No, Danny. We can’t go now.”

“But you did just fine jumping feet first into the Nine, with fewer capes to boot!”

“I knew  _ exactamente _ what I was getting myself into, and how to counter most of the Nine. Compare that to assaulting a hardened underground bunker staffed with mercenaries, potentially the Travelers depending on whether they’ve finished moving in or not, and a Thinker with an unknown power? I can almost guarantee we’d take casualties, even if we didn’t fail altogether. No, we need a plan unless we want to jump face-first into the meat grinder.”

“You could do it! You’ve got the Siberian, and all those powers!”

Amber pressed her hands together, then dropped her head so that the bridge of her nose rested on the tips of her index fingers. “Danny, I’m not infallible, I can still be blindsided. Plus I’m not to a point where I can safely multitask the Siberian and my body at the same time yet. There’s just too much we don’t know about the situation.”

Kurt dropped his hand on Danny’s shoulder. “We’ll get your little girl back.”

Amber pushed herself upright. “Come on, y’all. Let’s find a conference room so we can figure out the plan of attack.”

“I have a plan, attack.”

Amber blinked. Danny had just… he’d just quoted from a movie that hadn’t come out, either on Aleph or Bet.

Mouse popped her head into the room from the doorway. “We’ve got Conference Room 3 reserved.” She made eye contact with Danny, then Amber. “Oh, don’t worry about that. The author just thought it was funny.”

Amber sighed. “Right, right. Lead the way.”

The Mover in question did, showing the five Protectorate members to a conference room where the rest of the local Protectorate was, save for Armsmaster listening remotely from the Console.

“Alright, here’s what we’ve got on him. He’s got somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 mercenaries, with both conventional arms and Tinkertech laser attachments, inside his base. He’s also got a number of capes in his service. This includes Shadow Stalker, Trainwreck the Case 53 Tinker, potentially another Tinker, Grue who creates smoke that blocks most sensory methods, and Regent, aka Hijack, aka Jean-Paul Vasil, still under Heartbreaker’s Master influence, a Master in his own right. He can muck around with the nervous system, make you flinch and miss, and given enough time completely puppet someone.”

“Danny and you should take that one for sure because projections don’t have nerves.”

Amber made eye contact with the man in question, then nodded. “Good idea, Velocity.” They noted it down. “Next is the Travelers, he’s importing them from Accord today. Trickster can swap two objects in line of sight, Sundancer is fireproof and capable of summoning an orb of superheated plasma, Ballistic is capable of imbuing objects with supersonic velocity at a touch, and Genesis is a Master with various projection forms. Accord sold Perdition to the CUI, but they’ve got two members that tend not to enter combat. One is because his power doesn’t lend itself to combat, but the other one is not officially named. She’s a Case 53, with the power of making copies of any cape that touches her. Her lower body is a twisted mess of different animal parts, and capable of drawing others into itself. Under no circumstances whatsoever should you engage her in close combat  _ y punto _ .”

“Why doesn’t she enter combat?” asked Triumph.

“She can’t always control her lower body. Now, I’ve got a couple ideas for how to deal with her, but definitely keep your distance and don’t piss her off.”

“How do you think you could handle her?” asked Kurt.

“I might be able to induce a Second Trigger that could grant her more control. Otherwise, it’s classified. Very classified.” Amber stepped back. “Alright, that’s what we know about his forces. We don’t know much about the man beyond his nature as a Thinker, I’m still waiting to hear back from… someone… who might know more. He’s repeatedly shown a mastery of tactics and manipulations, as well as inside agents in at least the hospital and the police.”

“Wait, what do you mean he’s got agents in the police?” asked Danny.

“Somehow Shadow Stalker got into the hospital to drag Taylor to him, when she was under police guard. Dollars to donuts they were moles.”

Danny deflated. “Okay, you have a point.”

Before Amber could continue speaking, her cape phone rang. “Gimme a sec.” She slipped it out of her pocket, noting the blocked number, then flicked at the screen. “Go for Stitch in Time.”

“Amber? We need you to come in. It has to do with Capo.” Alexandria’s voice was brusque.

“And it can’t be done over the phone.” It wasn’t a question.

“No.”

“Alrighty then. Gimme a sec.” Amber hung up without letting Alexandria get in another word out of spite.

“Sorry about that, gotta go make the meeting about Capo’s power in person. Mouse, you’re in charge while I’m out.”

The shorter woman saluted, ignoring Armsmaster’s protestations. “I’ll make you proud, boss-lady!”

Amber slipped their phone back into their pocket, then jogged out to her room. Once she was alone, she called out “Door me, please.”

Doormaker’s signature portal opened, and Amber stepped through with a “Thank you.”

Alexandria, Number Man, Doctor Mother, and Eidolon stood in a white room, waiting for Amber. “Alright, let’s make this quick. Gotta get back to Brockton Bay so I can tell them about Capo’s power.”

“No.”

Amber turned a bemused look on Doctor Mother. “No?”

“No. It would ruin the integrity of the Parahuman feudalism experiment.”

Amber blinked repeatedly. “Pardon my French, but what the goddamn hell does that pile of  _ mierda _ have to do with the price of bread in Brockton Bay?”

“In the aftermath of the Entities-”

“They’re a non-issue. First off, the presence of a PRT division in Brockton Bay innately destroys the validity of the Parahuman Feudalism experiment because of the presence of a governmental agency, which in my eyes is the most pertinent point to you. But also, it’s inhumane bullshit that we’re calling off. We don’t need to worry about surviving past Gold Morning, we don’t need this bullshit.”

“How dare you-”

“Cut the shit. The Parahuman Feudalism experiment was already really bullshit, but your history of taking the rule of law and bending it over the goddamn table is something that’s going to come home to roost, eventually. Sooner or later, we all need to deal with the consequences of our actions,” snapped Amber.

The Cauldron members all backed off a step.

“Did anyone else think this was a good idea? Or did you just not think things through?” From the look on everyone’s faces, Amber knew it was the latter.

“Thought so. I’ll just go find Contessa and get his powers from her. Door to Contessa, please.” Amber turned to the door, then paused. “What sins do we commit in the dark, when only we can see?”

In the wake of Amber’s departure, the silence was deafening with accusations.

* * *

_ The next day _

Taylor tied her hair back, hands shaking slightly. Behind her, an echo of one of the Travelers (the one with the sharp-lined armor, that Lisa had called Ballistic) tossing a piece of a dismantled chair up and down.

“Hey.” Taylor jumped, then whirled on Aisha. “Oh, relax, Taylor. My power only kinda works on you.”

“Aisha,” said Lisa from across the room, “Don’t needle the cape who used your power to pick up the entirety of the Travelers’ roster’s powers.”

Aisha sighed. “Fine.”

Lisa moved closer to Taylor and lowered her voice. “Are you okay?”

“I will be.”

Lisa sighed, then shook her head. “Listen, Taylor. Everything’s going to be okay. We have Dinah’s predictions backing us up, your power, and we know the Protectorate is coming. We’ll be okay. We’ll make it out.”

Taylor breathed in, then out. “Yeah, I know. Still, I’m just worried. What if-”

Lisa covered Taylor’s mouth. “Ah-ah, no what ifs.” She cast around for a suitable line, then: “We’ve got the deck stacked pretty well in our favor, and if you’re losing, you’re not cheating well enough. We’re cheating just about as well as possible, so…”

Taylor offered a wobbly smile. “Thanks, Lisa. I needed that.”

Lisa bowed, smirking smugly. “Anytime.”

Aisha flipped the baton Taylor had gotten her by way of Shadow Stalker’s shade taking her out of the room. “I’m still not sure why you didn’t get me a knife or something,” she whined.

“You’ll get a knife,” retorted Lisa, “when you’re older. For now, the baton.”

Aisha sighed for form’s sake, the argument having come multiple times in the past few days. “Fine, if you say so. But I get a knife if Brian lets me, once we get out of here.”

“He’d agree with Lisa,” said Dinah. The precog had a habit of hiding in the corner, where she was emerging from now.

“Ugh, fine.”

Lisa looked towards Dinah. “Are we ready to leave?”

Dinah yawned, then nodded. “It’s time.”

Taylor took in a deep breath, then let it out through her nose. “Alright then. Go time.”

The echo of Ballistic put his hands on the doors, and with the thunderous crash of wood splintering on concrete, the die was cast.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Evil cliffhanger is evil. *Cackles*
> 
> Hopefully, this next week is Less Bullshit, I say for the third(?) week in a row.
> 
> That’s about it, so read, like, review, and have a nice day.


	13. (Dungeon) Bunker Crawl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In chess, the pawns go first.  
> -Magneto, but also Capo.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trying something different for the POV, this time. Let me know what y’all think about it, please.

Amber cracked her knuckles, then grinned. “Alright, then. Ready?”

“I still don’t see why I have to stay back with Velocity,” grumbled Danny.

“Fight like a Master, plus you and Velocity have some decent power synergy what with him carrying around miniatures. You two are the rapid response team, so we can call you in to grab Taylor and get her out.”

“That’s… fair.” Danny deflated.

Kurt rested his hand on Danny’s shoulder. “We’ll find her, Danny, don’t worry.”

Hannah and Triumph, the two other Protectorate members that they had managed to spare us for the operation, stood behind them awkwardly, until Amber nodded. Then, the four who were going into the base turned to the vast bunker door.

“You want to breach, or should I?” asked Amber, looking at Heavyweight.

“Go ahead, kiddo.”

Amber bared their teeth, then flicked a finger forward, spiking a flat layer of force field between the two layers and then forcing them apart with a shriek of tortured metal. “Open sesame,  _ cabrónes _ .”

Heavyweight and Amber entered first, a force field extending visibly from the latter cape to cover the floor in the case of traps, followed closely by the two Blasters who were both holding ready to attack.

The quartet of heroes first encountered resistance 50 feet into the first steel-walled passageway, in the form of a squad of mercenaries bursting out of a side room brandishing laser weaponry at them.

“Freeze!” snapped out Amber, manifesting a knee-height barrier behind the soldiers to trip the mercenaries. Triumph roared, shoving them back over the buried, and Hannah’s grenade launcher spat two confoam grenades, pinning them down.

Heavyweight lunged for the mercs, but arrested the motion, sighing. “You darn kids are just too fast for me,” he groused good-naturedly.

Amber tossed out a flippant salute, grinning. “You know you love us,” she ribbed.

“Yeah, yeah. Let’s keep moving.”

“Keep going!” shouted Taylor, her shade of Ballistic falling back to shatter a table leg against the jaundiced floor and force the mercenaries to stay back lest they be sprayed with splinters.

“I’m… trying!” panted Aisha, her control over her power flickering.

Dinah kept a tight grip on the taller girl’s hand, somehow keeping up with Aisha’s longer legs with no problems.

Lisa took another length of wood from the pile in her hands and tossed it to Taylor’s shadow, somehow not missing a step while doing so.

“83.7% chance of survival if we go right,” said Dinah, breathing somewhat heavily, eyes already focused on the approaching intersection.

The ragtag group did as Dinah suggested, already wearing down.

The yellow-tinted corridor dead-ended into a massive vault door. Lisa gave Dinah a level look. “Are you sure about that?” asked the older Thinker over the ruckus of approaching mercenaries.

“Our chance of survival goes up thirty percent if we hide inside that vault.” The younger girl’s bloodshot eyes bored into Lisa’s.

She sighed, then passed the pile of wood in her arms off to Dinah. “If you say so. Here, manage these for Taylor.”

Lisa hunched over the keypad, tapping a number of numbers in, while Aisha let her power loose and walked casually over to the mercs. After a moment, she returned, and in her wake a burst of foam expanded from around the corner, where Taylor’s projection was keeping them pinned down. “Time bought.”

With a click, the vault door swung open, and the beleaguered Capes slipped through the gap, closing it with a  _ THUD _ .

“Okay, we should be okay, for now,” said Lisa quietly.

“I’ll use my pro-” begun Taylor.

“Krouse?”

The four capes turned slowly, coming to face a massive, tentacled mass of animal body parts topped off with a tired-looking blonde woman’s torso.

“You’re not Krouse.”

* * *

“Fucking Trickster,” snapped Amber, darting out of sight.

Ballistic and Sundancer had gone down relatively easily, with Hannah managing to catch them both with one confoam grenade which prevented the Blaster from burning herself out with her sun. However, things had gone less right with the grenades aimed for the four-armed gorilla form of Genesis and Trickster himself.

Trickster had had a number of rocks on hand, and he threw them at the Protectorate group, then swapped them with the grenades just before they detonated.

Hannah and Triumph had been entirely covered, and while Heavyweight was only foamed to Triumph by one hand, it still prevented him from moving, since it had bonded with the ground and preventing him from wielding it.

The only reason Amber hadn’t been caught was Limelight’s personal force field, which didn’t have any of the pores or roughness that would have allowed it to adhere.

“You guys are still from Aleph, right?” Amber threw out, not expecting it to work.

A moment of silence passed. “How the hell did you know that?”

“You’re not cleared for that, Krouse.”

“How the hell do you know that name?” he snapped, a note of fear in his voice.

“Again, you’re not cleared to know that. But what if I told you that we could get you guys back?”

“If you were telling the truth…” he trailed off. “We can’t go home. Not yet.”

“Oh, right, because of Noelle. I… I think I have some options that could help with that, maybe.”

“You what?”

“Look, if you guys would be willing to stand down and let us take out Capo and find GameMaster’s kid, we can get back to you after that.”

“Wait, what do you mean, GameMaster’s kid?”

“Capo got Shadow Stalker to kidnap him for her, I think. We tracked her to this base.”

“What the fuck? We didn’t sign up for breaching the Unwritten Rules. We’ll stand down, yeah.” Genesis picked up the two foamed capes, then loped off into the distance, followed by Krouse.

A moment later, Hannah finally managed to release the counteragent, dissolving herself out of the foam. Another few minutes saw Triumph and Heavyweight freed from the foam.

“Okay, what the hell was that?” asked Heavyweight. “You just… What the fuck?”

Amber shook her head. “Long story, but Noelle’s the Case 53 that has the touching issues. Her power is really broken, and not in the good way.”

“Huh. Are you sure they’ll stay outta the way?”

Amber nodded. “They’re villains because they need money to help cure her if they can. They’ll all help her as best they can up to the point of her becoming an S-class threat, in some cases, but as long as we’re legitimately trying to help, we should be okay.”

The two ex-Wards blinked, and Heavyweight sighed. “Fine, fine. If you’re sure.”

“I am. Now, let’s-”

Amber was cut off by the squelching of a crossbow bolt embedding itself in her back.

“Peachy,” they sighed. “Hi, Sophia.”

* * *

“Wait, so let me get this straight. You’re from Earth Aleph?” asked Lisa.

“Yes.”

“And you arrived here in the middle of Khonsu’s attack on Madison in 2008?” Aisha was lying on her back, eyes closed.

“That is correct.”

“And you got powers from taking these weird vial things, which you only took half of?” Taylor had switched her shadow to Mr. Stranger’s to help her understand the situation. “And you didn’t think about any of the warnings that came with the vials, or even that taking them might not be a good idea?”

Noelle sighed. “I know we made a mistake, it was just… desperation, at the time.”

Taylor sighed. “I understand that, but… still.”

Noelle drooped. “I… I know we’ve made mistakes. It’s just… well, we never had much of a choice. Not since Khonsu tore open the hole between Aleph and Bet we came through.”

Lisa’s eyes flicked to Taylor, then Noelle, then went wide. “Holy shit.”

“What?” Everyone’s eyes shot to her.

“I think I might have just figured out how to fix your powers.”

“You- you can do that?”

“Me? No way. But her?” Lisa looked to Taylor. “Maybe. Just maybe.”

“Me? How would that work?” asked Taylor.

“You’re both Striker/Master/Trumps, and something about your power feels… really strong. Weirdly strong. I don’t know what it actually is about your power, but…” Lisa winced. “Anyways, you might be able to help her.”

“51.908318861% chance that you help Noelle with her power if you touch her,” chirped Dinah, before anyone else could ask.

Taylor looked at Dinah, then Lisa, then the echo of Stranger, who nodded. “Alright. I’ll do it.”

Noelle sagged with relief. “Thank you, Taylor. I’m tired of having to be trapped and kept hidden away like this, tired of this… injury… that I’m stuck with.” She glared at her lower body, which stilled momentarily.

Taylor nodded, then turned to Lisa. “So should I just… touch her and try to make a copy of her?”

Lisa nodded. “That should be enough.”

“Alright then.” Taylor walked forward and Noelle lowered her torso to the ground, reaching out a hand to Taylor. The brunette took her hand, and focused, closing her eyes to concentrate.

They stood there like that for almost two minutes, before Dinah shot to her feet. “Get her away from-”

_ Two beings, made of crystal-star-flesh cells, float through space. A third approaches from far beyond, rubbing against one of them, then departing. The one it rubbed against continued onward with its partner, shedding their cells as they decelerate. The one that had touched the third failed to slow down enough, slamming into one version of earth, dazed. The third returned slowly, having left some of its cells active and alive in the others so they could pave the way for its return. They would eventually be labelled: the Eye, Division, Butcher, and more. _

_ The dazed one loses coherence gradually, until it heals in a flash of green light, and it begins communicating with a pinprick of green-purple light, and eventually its counterpart. It assimilates the Eye, but cannot reach all of Division, and Butcher is wholly out of its reach. One of those has changed- Division is shifting, reconfiguring, and the Third reaches out for it, but so does the one who holds it. _

**_[DESTINATION]_ **

**_[AGREEMENT]_ **

**_[TRAJECTORY]_ **

**_[AGREEMENT]_ **

**_[INTERFERENCE]_ **

**_[McFuck Off]_ **

**_[SHOCK]_ **

**_[Leave. Now.]_ **

* * *

Amber turned to face the masked Breaker, already reaching back to tear out the bolt in her back. She winced and clenched her teeth as she tore the broadhead out of her back, but very little blood spilled from the wound before it sealed over. “So, kiddo, what are you up to these days? Commit any particularly interesting kidnappings of Protectorate members’ kids, perhaps?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

Amber leaned forward and bared their teeth. “You didn’t know that Taylor was GameMaster’s daughter?”

Sophia held still for a moment, then swept her crossbow up to point at Miss Militia’s head. “You know what, I don’t think I give a good god damn. She’s still weak. Weak enough that she needs to ride off your power, yours and her father’s, not that he has much anyways.”

Amber raised an eyebrow, changing out Limelight’s force fields in favor of Sourcefield’s electricity. “Is that what you think about the young woman who survived a sustained campaign of harassment, assault, and psychological torment?”

“Fuck you!” Sophia spat. “I don’t have to explain anything to you!”

“I guess you don’t.” Amber snapped up her hand, sending an arc of electricity to hit Sophia, sending her twitching to the ground. “After all, I’m not your therapist or your lawyer.”

“Are you going to take her to the Rig?” asked Hannah.

“That’s the plan. I’ll be back, unless anyone has objections?”

Three heads shook, and after a moment, Amber had made the handoff thanks to Obliteration’s teleportation.

“Alright, we should be ready to-”

_ Two beings, made of crystal-star-flesh cells, float through space. A third approaches from far beyond, rubbing against one of them, then departing. The one it rubbed against continued onward with its partner, shedding their cells as they decelerate. The one that had touched the third failed to slow down enough, slamming into one version of earth, dazed. The third returned slowly, having left some of its cells active and alive in the others so they could pave the way for its return. They would eventually be labelled: the Eye, Division, Butcher, and more. _

_ The dazed one loses coherence gradually, until it heals in a flash of green light, and it begins communicating with a pinprick of green-purple light, and eventually its counterpart. It assimilates the Eye, but cannot reach all of Division, and Butcher is wholly out of its reach. One of those has changed- Division is shifting, reconfiguring, and the Third reaches out for it, but so does the one who holds it. _

**_[DESTINATION]_ **

**_[AGREEMENT]_ **

**_[TRAJECTORY]_ **

**_[AGREEMENT]_ **

**_[INTERFERENCE]_ **

_ Amber felt the power of Abbadon reaching across time and space to interfere, and pushed back. _

**_[McFuck Off]_ **

**_[SHOCK]_ **

**_[Leave. Now.]_ **

_ Amber felt it retreat, for now, and Division finished reconfiguring itself under Queen Administrator’s watchful eye. _

The other three capes pushed themselves up from where they’d fallen in the wake of the Trigger event. “That’s… not a great sign,” said Hannah.

Amber frowned. Division, where did that seem familiar from… “Ah. Right. Okay, I think that’s the issue with Noelle resolved. I’m like 75% sure that was a Second Trigger that dealt with the issues her agent’s configuration had.”

“That explains both more and less than I expected, somehow,” said Kurt.

“I’ll explain later, probably. Maybe. Depending on if the author sees fit to write it.” Amber took a step forward, flipping back to Limelight’s field and layering it over the floor and accidentally triggering a landmine, which the force field protected them from. “Come on, ride ain’t over yet.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was fighting me a little bit, but that was also partially a function of my muse wanting to write original fiction (which may or may not be the next project I work on after this one).
> 
> That’s it for this chapter, so read, review, enjoy, and have a nice day!


	14. Decapitation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alternative Title: Da Capo al Coda, or, Have I Made My Music Nerd Status Clear Yet?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I’ve gotten a (frankly less than polite) PM saying that I fucked up with the pronouns (in different words), so to be clear, Amber is nonbinary and uses she/they, and the pronoun switching is entirely intentional.
> 
> There’s gonna be some transphobic language from the section that’s from Capo’s POV…

Today, thought Capo, had not been a good day. First, Grue had begun to get uppity, and just before going out to bring in Circus, and had required… additional persuasion… to agree to pursue the transvestite grab-bag. In addition, Rachel Lindt had proven surprisingly resistant to Regent’s power, and had been required that he secure her in a vault similarly to the Traveler’s monster cape from her unwillingness to part with her dogs. Only judicious use of his power to iterate and discard plans allowed him to salvage the situations, as opposed to the loss of a number of assets.

Then, the Protectorate breached the front gate at almost exactly the same time that the larger group of parahumans he had yet to break in made their bid to escape.

That sounded like a coincidence, at least superficially, until he recalled that one of the parahumans was a precognitive Thinker.

Damn. It probably was connected.

In his first attempt, he set Grue and Circus to intercept the group of parahumans, not telling him that his sister was among them, while sending most of his mercenaries to meet the Protectorate forces and holding Regent and the Travelers in reserve. While the mercenaries, by way of sustained fire, had manage to pin down the heroes, the tide was clearly starting to turn.

That particular set of events ended with Grue and Circus joining with his captives and beating the Travelers halfway to unconsciousness, which he abandoned just before they opened the door.

That left him with the beginnings of a Thinker headache, which he’d never had to date, not even in the odd defensive fields that he’d paid Accord for Citrine to set up.

That… probably wasn’t a great sign.

The next set of events saw him deploying Circus and Regent to support mercenaries against the children, then Grue in a similar role in regards to the Protectorate heroes, again with the Travelers in reserve.

Circus had still turned coat, although targeting Regent had let the mercenaries take the tranny out, which in turn let the unindoctrinated capes take the rest of them out.

They ended up… liberating Miss Lindt, and with her enhanced dogs, they made quick work of the Travelers, and Capo made the reset with the capes on the doorstep to his office.

Somehow, this only exacerbated his headache. Perhaps when he drove them off he’d contact Cauldron again and see if they knew anything about why he was suddenly getting the Thinker headaches, but for now he had to direct his defense.

The third timeline he took sent the Travelers up to hold the Protectorate forces, while mercenaries herded his more recent acquisitions towards Noelle’s vault, which ended up with them hiding in the vault.

One of the newer Protectorate capes- Saves Nine, or something like that- had said something to the two that had avoided getting foamed by Miss Militia, and then the Travelers retreated, allowing them to regroup and-

Capo came to with a bruise on his forehead and his head on the desk, pain throbbing at his temples. What the hell had just happened?

Flipping through the camera feeds available to him had him stop at Noelle’s vault, staring blankly. The monstrous child was… changing. Her lower body was changing, shrinking and turning into normal human legs.

He turned back the footage to see what was actually going on, which revealed the Hebert girl touching her immediately before everyone dropped.

What the hell was her power that it could induce a second trigger in a Cauldron cape?

Ah, well. That would be a question for another timeline. He forced a reset through, feeling the pain in his head spike, and raised his head off his desk where it had fallen.

Wait, what? What had happened to his reset point?

* * *

Taylor blinked her eyes open, then rubbed her eyes. For a moment, her arms moved as if being manipulated by a marionette, but then the feeling went away and she rubbed gunk away from her eyes.

She felt arms wrap around her from behind, squeezing tight, and she manifested Ballistic’s shade halfway to launching the person away before hearing the rapid-fire “Thank You” that came from the limpet she’d acquired somehow, and realizing that they were, in fact, giving her a hug.

Then, her memory of what she had been doing before returned, and she turned, squirming in the hug. “Noelle! Did it work?”

The shorter girl nodded, beaming so hard that she almost seemed to glow. “I’ve got my legs back now!”

The rest of the capes in the room pushed themselves to their feet, shaking their heads.

Dinah blinked, then sagged in relief. “Good, the author set us on one of the good paths.”

Lisa blinked, then turned and looked strangely at the younger Thinker. “What did you just say, Dinah?”

“Don’t worry about it, Lisa. It’s a fourth wall thing.”

The blonde’s eye twitched, then she sighed. “We’ll… we’ll talk about this later, but for now we need to get out. Taylor, you’ll need to go outside and enter the code, they’re not gonna put a keypad in here.”

“Got it.” A moment’s work with Shadow Stalker’s shade, then Lisa’s, led to the vault door swinging open, and soon the group was walking through the corridors of the bunker.

After five awkward minutes, the silence was broken, but not by them.

A suited man with a top hat and red mask rounded a corner, then froze. “Noelle?”

The ex-Case 53 froze herself, then waved. “Hi, Francis.”

“Why… why are you not wearing pants?”

Everyone blinked, then Noelle squeaked and dove into a side room. Lisa sighed, said “I’ll be right back,” and then jogged off down another corridor.

A large gorilla-like thing came down the corridor, holding two people who were covered in one large lump of containment foam, one being a red-armored man and the other being a woman in red and black spandex. “What’s going on?” asked the woman.

“Uh, I may or may not have fixed Noelle’s power?” When all four of the other group of capes turned to Taylor, she quailed a bit.

“You… fixed Noelle’s power.” The armored man’s voice was skeptical.

“You bet!” said Aisha, startling everyone. “She just smacked that gal’s power and it turned into some legs!”

“What.” The spandex-clad woman’s voice was flat.

At that moment, Lisa returned, a folded pair of pants in her hands. “It’s true, she fixed Noelle’s power.” She walked into the room that Noelle was in, then a moment later walked out, trailed by the former Case 53.

“How…” the armored man’s question was cut off by Noelle, once again rushing forward to perform what was legally in a grey area between assault and a public display of affection (and either way not allowed on school grounds) on the top-hatted man.

Lisa nodded, then gestured down a corridor. “Come on, we’ll walk and talk.” The nine capes continued forward down said corridor, and the Thinker began: “Alright, so I think it went down a little like this: Taylor’s power is…”

* * *

Amber sighed. “Fucking Bond villains and their fucking traps,” she said, tiredly, slowly pushing a force field up to counteract a literal hydraulic spiked press.

“I still don’t know how he got away with building an underground base here. I mean, he’d need all kinds of permits…” Hannah frowned.

Heavyweight shook his head. “Nah, This was originally an Endbringer shelter before they flagged it for a massive issue with the foundation… something like the site being over a weak spot in the aquifer, I think, but don’t quote me on that.”

“Hm. Sounds like high grade bullshit to me, given what’s actually here, but hiding a hardened underground bunker as a hardened underground bunker for the purposes of Bullshit Supervillain Shenaniganry is definitely a nice play, even if the guy who made it was an absolute douche.” With a shriek of tortured metal, the hydraulic press deformed as Limelight’s force field kept pressing upwards beyond the original location of the press. “Come on, let’s keep moving.”

The four heroes kept pressing forward warily, fighting off the occasional hit-and-run assault from mercenaries, but on the whole, they were making decent time.

Of course, just as soon as Amber had this thought, darkness billowed out from a side corridor, and the confoam grenade that Miss Militia’s grenade launcher would have launched into the room hit the floor as her arms twitched down.

“Fucking hell,” sighed Amber, wrapping the grenade in a force field and then hurling it into the room anyways, containing the detonation long enough to splatter the foam inside the room rather than on the heroes. The darkness slowed, but didn’t stop.

Amber felt her arm try and twitch, then pulsed a barrier forwards, expanding into the room and sending things crashing into walls (as heard through the barrier, and not the darkness it shoved forwards).

“Flashbangs?” asked Amber, making eye contact with Hannah and curling her hand into a c shape at chest height.

“Will do.” She raised a grenade launcher and two fingers. “Three, two-” she clicked the trigger twice, sending a pair of grenades into the room just as Amber dropped the force field still in the room.

Amber waited long enough to hear the two cracks of concussion grenades, then surged into the room, taking in the overturned table, splintered chairs, and two supervillains sprawled against the far wall, stirring groggily.

One of them was the skull-masked form of Grue, and the other being the puffy-shirted form of Regent.

“Foam Regent,” said Amber, already walking towards the other cape, “but hold off on Grue.” They wrapped the Shaker in a layer of Limelight’s force fields, then raised him to eye height.

“Hello, Mr. Laborn. I believe we have a lot to talk about.”

“What? How do you know my name?”

“That’s not relevant, kiddo,” said Amber, giving Grue a level look. “My question is, is Capo helping you with your sister or holding her hostage?”

He stiffened, then sighed. “The latter.”

Amber nodded. “Thought so. Alrighty then. Mitigating circumstances are mitigating circumstances, and… well, I think we could probably get you into the Wards.”

“Are you sure?”

Amber snorted. “Well, they let Shadow Stalker in, and she was a hell of a lot worse than you are.”

Grue chuckled. “There is that.”

“Alright, so if you don’t mind, I’ll-”

“What are you doing with my brother?”

Amber let him down, then turned to Aisha Laborn. “Ah. Hey there, kid. I was inviting him to join the Wards.”

She blinked, gobsmacked. “Wait, what?”

Amber nodded. “I mean, he’d be a probationary Ward, but he’d be a Ward, yeah.”

“Oh. Sweet. Hey, could I join up too?”

Amber nodded again. “Probably, once we deal with Capo.”

Aisha grinned. “Be right back.”

Amber felt something twinge in her head, but she raised the kid off the ground with Legacy’s gravity power nevertheless. “Hang on, kiddo. How about you spend some time with your brother? I get that there’s probably a fair amount of resentment you carry for him, but it’s probably better for liability reasons if we take care of him instead of you.”

Aisha blinked. “Wait, what? You can see me?”

Amber raised an eyebrow, then getured with their left hand, drawing Aisha towards them. “If I couldn’t, I wouldn’t be talking to you like this, now would I?”

“Who are you talking to?” Grue tilted his head sideways.

Amber sighed, then shook her head. “Alright, Aisha, power down for now, then we can get you kids to the rig and deal with Capo.”

The girl pouted, then sighed. “Fine, fine.”

Amber raised an eyebrow when she saw the Travelers, but when Trickster raised his hands, she just sighed. “Right, right. Out of the base, kids. We’ll handle Capo.”

The younger parahumans grumbled, but ultimately did as they were told, departing the base, accompanied by Triumph.

Another ten minutes of traversing through the base followed before the three remaining Protectorate members found Capo in his office, protected by a baker’s dozen mercenaries, who were admittedly not much of a challenge to the trio.

When Amber forced the door open, she found the blank mask of Capo staring back. “You’re… very irritating.”

The Trump huffed out a laugh. “Yeah, that’s kinda the point. Be enough of a pain in the ass that it makes being a villain unfeasible, and offer a legal alternative in heroism and through NEPEA-5, although from what I’ve heard that last one kinda crashed and burned thanks to… well, it doesn’t matter at this point. We’ll be unfucking the situation soon enough.”

“No,” said Capo, leaning forward, leaving Amber with the peculiar impression that he was baring his teeth under his mask. “You. You won’t die. Not when I blow the base, not when I shoot you, not when I nullify your power. My power doesn’t even work near you. Why?”

Amber rocked back onto her heels, then sighed. Her voice came out a harsh, bitter sound. “Because I have too much shit on my plate to think of dying yet. Because I won’t give my old eighth grade bully the satisfaction. Because the Author said so. Because I’m to gay and stubborn to die.” She leaned in and snarled. “But most of all, because fuck you.”

“Spite.” Capo leaned back and sighed. “I can respect that. But tell me, what happens when that runs out?”

Amber laughed bitterly. “I’ve got enough spite in me for a thousand years, but even if I outlast that, I’ll find something else. Always have.”

“We will see.” There was a smile in those words.

Miss Militia gave Amber a tired look, then sighed. “Capo, we hereby place you under arrest for, among other things, four counts of kidnapping with the use of a parahuman power.”

As Hannah read the man his Miranda rights, Amber sighed, letting the battle-loose relaxation seep from her body. The fight was over, yes, but why did it feel like he’d won anyways?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter kinda fought me, hence it coming out later than normal. Next week is going to be Not Fun, so maybe don’t expect a chapter? IDK I’ve said that like five times and each time a chapter’s come out, so maybe????? I don’t even know anymore I’m just tired
> 
> That’s it for this chapter, so read, review, enjoy, and have a nice day!


End file.
